The Butterscotch on the Go food truck sits on Jefferson Drive in Menlo Park on Friday, April 8, 2011. Kathleen Jensen and her husband, former Menlo Park police chief Bruce Goitia, started serving their upscale sandwiches in Palo Alto last December. While Jensen, a part-time chef and caterer, prepares food, Goitia takes orders and chats up customers. (Kirstina Sangsahachart/ Daily News)

Just as Bruce Goitia was getting ready to retire from his job as Menlo Park police chief last June, his wife Kathleen Jensen was about to embark on a new career.

Jensen, a part-time personal chef and caterer, had set her sights on the latest culinary craze — food trucks that dish up gourmet cuisine.

“I started talking about it and little by little the idea started to pull together,” she said. “But everyone, Bruce included, laughed at me.”

“I was like, ‘Yeah right, you’ve got to be kidding me,’ ” Goitia said. “My experience had been with the fly-by-night quick stop.”

It wasn’t until Jensen showed Goitia a story in Gourmet magazine celebrating mobile vendors that he understood the allure.

Kathleen Jensen and her husband, former Menlo Park police chief Bruce Goitia, work on customer orders inside their Butterscotch on the Go food truck in Menlo Park on Friday, April 8, 2011. Jensen, a part-time chef and caterer, introduced her upscale sandwiches in Palo Alto last December. As Jensen prepares food, Goitia takes orders and chats up customers. (Kirstina Sangsahachart/ Daily News)

“People lined up for an hour and a half to get a sandwich or different kinds of ethnic foods,” he said.

So much for retirement. The couple purchased a former American Red Cross vehicle, which they converted into a mobile kitchen at a cost of about $19,000. A new food truck would have cost $200,000 to $250,000, according to Goitia.

Another $10,000 went into cleaning up the vehicle, fixing mechanical problems and making mandated health code improvements.

The couple’s food truck business, Butterscotch On the Go, made its debut at an event in Palo Alto in December. The next month it began paying lunch-hour visits to office buildings in Menlo Park.

Butterscotch’s specialty is sandwiches — thick slices of roast beef, grilled chicken or salami piled between slices of freshly baked bread, and finished with caramelized onions, homemade aioli or roasted tomatoes.

“I just love sandwiches made out of good things,” Jensen said. Butterscotch also serves soups and salads.

The couple has also earned a following with desserts such as their signature butterscotch brownie with brown butter icing.

Three to four days a week, the couple typically serves as many as 50 people per 90-minute lunch shift. Jensen handles the food while Goitia takes orders and chats with customers. They use Facebook and Twitter to keep customers informed about the food truck’s whereabouts.

Goitia said he never intended to get into the food business after 28 years in law enforcement. Originally, he had merely given in to his wife’s request for “just three months” help to get her started, but now he is enjoying the change of pace.

“Retired (police) chiefs usually get on a list and they work as an interim chief or consultant,” he said. “But it’s been nice doing something different. I’m not hearing (someone) complain about what one of my cops did last night, I’m hearing (someone) tell me ‘I love your sandwich’.”

There’s still a chance the 54-year-old Goitia will return to law enforcement. But Jensen said the business is ready to add staff and she has long-term goals of operating several trucks.

“I guess it depends on how the business goes,” he said. “If this goes well, I’ll be spending my time here.”

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When Kathleen Jensen’s Butterscotch on the Go truck opened for business recently in Menlo Park, it joined one of the hottest trends in food.

Food trucks are all the rage, according to a survey of 1,500 professional chefs by the National Restaurant Association.

In big cities, the trucks are everywhere, often featuring a single specialty, such as macaroni and cheese, Korean tacos, sushi, ice cream sandwiches, or creme brulee.

In September, “Edgewood Eats,” a neighborhood-organized event, attracted 300 diners to Edgewood Plaza Shopping Center in Palo Alto, where mobile gourmet-food vendors sold dinner in the parking lot.

The craze has finally made its way to Menlo Park, where most of us are familiar only with taco trucks or trucks serving construction workers. Butterscotch on the Go takes curbside dining to a different level.

After working as a personal chef for 10 years, Kathleen Jensen of Menlo Park decided what she really wanted to do was focus on food and interact with more people. A food truck seemed the perfect solution. She and her husband, retired Menlo Park police chief Bruce Goitia, purchased an aging Red Cross disaster relief truck to use as a mobile kitchen.

While the truck was being refurbished, Ms. Jensen began a wholesale dessert business selling baked goods to local cafes. She named it Butterscotch Bakery after her favorite flavor. After the truck was ready for business, Butterscotch Bakery became Butterscotch on the Go.

Inspired by the open-face sandwiches served in France (tartines), Ms. Jensen features them on her food truck menu, in addition to regular sandwiches, salads, seasonal soups, and desserts.

A sample menu includes a beef tenderloin sandwich with caramelized onions on a toasted baguette; a salami, mozzarella and roasted tomato sandwich on artisan bread; and a chicken club tartine with chicken, aioli, bacon, roasted tomatoes and melted fontina served on ciabatta.

Another open-face selection is prosciutto, fig jam, and gorgonzola served on toasted levain (bread).

Entree-size salads include the Seville (mixed lettuces, goat cheese, bacon, and spiced pecans with thyme vinaigrette) and the Isabelle (mixed lettuces, walnuts, apples, smoked cheddar, dried cranberries and cider vinaigrette).

The sweets selection features her signature dish: butterscotch pudding with smoked almond brittle and (real) whipped cream.

Food trucks traditionally roam the streets, often settling in a different location, keeping in touch with customers on Twitter and Facebook. Butterscotch on the Go is no exception. “We will also have a calendar on our website,” she says.

As a new venture, Butterscotch on the Go is operating in the Bohannon Industrial Park area of east Menlo Park three days a week, from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m..

Kathleen Jensen has been interested in food since she received an Easy Bake Oven at age 6. While pursuing a high-powered career in retail, she found time to do catering for friends. She began working as a personal chef when her daughter, now 13, was born.

Although she never attended culinary school, she has taken many cooking classes locally and in San Francisco.

As the new business gets on its feet, Ms. Jensen says, her husband is helping out by driving the truck, while she presides over the kitchen. Later, she hopes to hire more staff.

All the salads and sandwiches are assembled on site. Prep work is being done in the commercial kitchen at Studio Cakes in Menlo Park.

One family member who doesn’t share Kathy Jensen’s interest in gourmet food is her daughter, Isabelle. Ms. Jensen says she’s a “picky eater,” preferring American cheese and canned soup to her mother’s fancy fare.

For more information, search online for Butterscotch on the Go.

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