Jason Johnson, a co-owner of Curbside Cuisine, cooks up one of his "bilingual burgers" while serving food recently outside of a Fairfield business. Johnson, who has worked as a chef in Oakland and Fairfield, started Curbside Cuisine with his wife, Carissa, and father-in-law Willie Lumagui. (Brad Zweerink/Daily Republic)

SUISUN CITY — Curbside Cuisine looked just a little bit different amid the mobile food vendors at the recent Solano County Fair.

Fair fare for the most part is hot dogs, pastrami sandwiches, fish-and-chips and the like. But this new, Suisun City-based food truck business had some rather different offerings.

No one else at the fair sold the Vietnamese-inspired Banh Mi Burger, which includes pork, beef, pickled daikon, carrots and cucumbers.

Other fair food trailers and trucks offered hot dogs, but only Curbside Cuisine had the Seoul Dog, with its chopped kimchi and Japanese mayonnaise that cook Jason Johnson said is different from the typical type.

“It’s a little more flavorable,” he said. “It has a little rice vinegar in it. It’s sweeter than your regular mayonnaise.”

Curbside Cuisine is a new food truck operating in Solano County. Brad Zweerink/Daily Republic

Curbside Cuisine offers Filipino food, Japanese food, Korean food, soul food, Thai food and other types. It debuted in early August at the Green Valley farmers market. The fair marked its second location.

Johnson, his wife Carissa Johnson and Carissa Johnson’s father, Willie Lumagui, are the forces behind Curbside Cuisine. They bring the food truck to various Solano County locations and publicize these locations on Twitter.

Jason Johnson previously served as a sous chef at Yoshi’s in Oakland. In late 2009, he became chef at the Cast Iron Grill and Bar at Harbor Square along the Suisun City waterfront.

But Jason Johnson, Carissa Johnson and Lumagui decided to strike out on their own in the business world.

“Just wanted to do our own thing,” Jason Johnson said.

He had helped make other restaurants successful and now wanted to do the same for his own. Plus, he said, working for someone else means you are kind of held back when it comes to enacting your own culinary vision. Now he is free to do so.

That vision draws on the different types of food he ate when he lived in the Bay Area, whether it be Korean or Japanese.

“I would always like to eat the street-style food or food from the little hole-in-the-wall restaurants,” he said.

He, Carissa Johnson and Lumagui decided their restaurant would be on the move, rather than be in a building. They use local vegetables and produce and do some of the food preparation at the Shared Spoon, a commercial kitchen in Suisun City.

http://www.dailyrepublic.com/featured-stories/curbside-cuisine-offers-food-on-the-move-in-solano-market/