KocinA Food Truck

KocinA Food Truck. From the website, "Cocina means kitchen in Spanish. We spell ours with a "K" in honor of our oldest daughter, Kendall, and end with a capital "A" for our youngest daughter, Anna Sofia." How cute. This warms my cold black heart. In all seriousness, I'm all for this concept. Yelp is all about discovering local treasures, and nothing says small business like a cutesy origin story behind the name.The concept behind KocinA is South American street food. Expect to find arepas, burrito bowls, empanadas, and things of that sort on the menu. Entrees are all $10+, which is common enough for food trucks. I ordered the ropa vieja plate for $12, essentially a twice-as-expensive barbacoa burrito bowl from Chipotle.I expect a combination of exciting flavors and quality from food trucks. This expectation should frankly be lowered by this point, but I continue to dream on. The ropa vieja plate was mostly fine. There wasn't anything particular to like or dislike about the food itself; however, look at the picture that I posted and notice the obvious flaw in the way they serve it.In what universe would you put paper in a container when you're serving a burrito bowl? I'm sure I do need more fiber in my diet, but I have a fairly strict policy against eating paper. The paper would quite obviously get soaked immediately due to a combination of the juices from the black beans and the meat. This should make it an obvious no-go... shouldn't it?Even with the health concerns, I'd still pick the barbacoa bowl from Chipotle over the ropa vieja plate at KocinA. Aside from the extra fiber of the dish, the flavors didn't quite match the price. I'm sure there's other menu items that aren't served with such wretched stupidity at KocinA, but I don't see any reason to try them. I'll prefer to let other food trucks disappoint me, since there's a marginally better chance that they won't.

Tried Plantain Burrito Bowl (Vegetarian) and it was decent. I didn't like the Plantains in it as it was too oily but the rest of the bowl was decent enough. From Vegetarian perspective, there is nothing special or great about this place.

I tried Kocina one night at Bull City Ciderworks and was impressed by the range of Latin American street food. The empanadas were fluffy and delicious and the sauce on the side was great. The patatas bravas weren't as good as Mateo's, but still delicious. I also found the arepa to be delicious (even though arepas are more plentiful now that Epachamo is open). I will definitely eat here again next time I see the truck around town.

When I sampled from this food truck, it was situated right outside of Social Gameroom & Tap, which doesn't serve food, so it received a lot of business. Problem was, only one person was running the truck, meaning that the food would take forever to be ready. Also, since it was the end of the day (about 6-7pm), he had already run out of certain items, namely steak, which I was most looking forward to.The Spinach Empanada (wheat flour crust turn-overs with chimichurri mayo, pico de gallo, and cheese, 2 for $6) are very popular and taste great. They're nice and puffy - you get a lot of the stuffing with each bite! The Tortilla Espanola (Spanish egg omelet with fried potatoes and red peppers, 2 pieces for $5) are light and crispy. The Chino Latino Lomo Saltado (Peruvian stir-fry of chicken with onions, tomatoes, peppers, and French fries, served on white rice and topped with Asian slaw, $7) is very difficult to eat without a fork as a result of all the stuffing! It's a sandwich with a strange variety of ingredients thrown together. There are many Asian fusion places in the Triangle, but I still think that many of the menu combinations I've seen are odd, including this lomo saltado with "Asian slaw (which turned out to be kimchi)." I didn't hate it, but I'm not a fan either. Some things should not be mixed.....

Really good empanadas. Went there at the Durham Food Truck Rodeo and tried their beef empanadas. The best part is the sauce that comes with it that has some kind of garlic in it. Delish!

Food took forever to come out. Bread was completely soggy with barely any meat inside.

We went to Bull City Ciderworks and KocinA was there providing food for the cider drinkers. It was nice to be able to order food while we were there, but unfortunately there was nothing impressive about what we ordered. Dan & I both ordered the Cuban sandwich and they weren't very good. Oddly enough his had a lot more pork on it than mine did. To say they were skimpy on the meat is an understatement. It's like two different people were in the truck making the sandwiches and one just really didn't care about the quality of the food. Also, it took them quite a while to make the sandwiches but there wasn't a line of people waiting for food so I'm not sure why it took them so long. They certainly weren't taking their time to ensure that the food was good quality. I didn't hate the sandwich, but it was very disappointing.

Excellent Latin American style food. Ropa vieja (with anything, whether a sandwich or arepa) and their Cuban are THE best my friends and I have had in the triangle. Large portions. Can't go wrong with their empanadas or platanos maduros. Their sauces are great too. And the staff is incredibly nice, which always, well, nice!

Absolutely DELICIOUS. I had the empanadas, and a sandwich completely stuffed with marinated chicken, peppers, and onions. The garlic sauce that they serve with the food is yummy enough to drink. My mouth still tastes like garlic, ,and I could not be happier. If you see this food truck, run to it.

Delicious chicken arepas, choripan, maduros/plantains, & yucca fries! The sauce with the fries had an intense, long lasting kick, but was yummy. Only had Coke & Sprite for drink options--no water, no sugar free anything--but it was a warm day & I think they had run out.