Food truck review: Hisham's Food a mobile feast for South African cuisine in Columbus
Food truck season is in full swing and I’m here for it.
This comes from someone who, years ago, wondered if food trucks were an overhyped food fad. Well, I’m a true believer now and I’m not alone — food trucks have become ingrained in Columbus culture and it’s primarily because so many wheeled eateries cook really good stuff.
The appeal of food trucks has only increased during the pandemic (aren’t COVID infections spiking again?), because they’re essentially restaurants without the dining-among-strangers component. Another thing about food trucks: They’re often commandeered by exceptionally friendly, hardworking, almost necessarily optimistic and interesting people.
Like Hisham Omardien. Before hitting the road in an orange vehicle called Hisham's Food three years ago, Omardien had been the ballet master at BalletMet for 10 years, which put a cap on the nearly four decades he’d devoted to ballet.
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But the path Omardien traveled to his food truck was largely unchoreographed, and it began in his native South Africa. That’s where, 20-plus years ago, the visiting BalletMet company saw Omardien dance and subsequently offered him a one-year contract to perform back in Columbus. One year in a city he knew little about turned into a whole new life in Ohio that included contract extensions and marrying Olivia Clark, a BalletMet dancer from Bellville.
From footwork to food work
Once his dancing career ended, Omardien — who is 52 — turned memories of his mother's cooking and his love of throwing dinner parties into his next professional steps inside Hisham’s Food.
Offering dishes based on the recipes of his mother, Omardien advertises “South African Cape Malay” cuisine. You don’t see that cuisine mentioned much locally, but if you’re familiar with Indian food, you’ll find plenty that’s familiar at Hisham’s Food.
Hisham’s meaty and delicious ground beef, potato and pea curry ($14) is clearly related to the well-known Indian dish called aloo keema. Animated by notes of cinnamon, ginger, garlic, bay leaf, cardamom and chile, this crowd-pleasing curry fortifies additional truck-menu items for good reason.
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Characteristic for Hisham’s curry dishes, it was spicy, fragrant and even better when decorated with house onion sambal (a little like Indian mixed pickle) and dahi (think zesty raita); came with fluffy and abundant basmati rice; and was relatively lean. To that last point: Unlike numerous curries around town, Hisham’s weren’t laden with cream or ghee.
Two other recurring curries are: eggplant, potato and chickpea ($12) — a tasty, chickpea-happy stew (even if chickpea gets last billing) somewhat similar to chana masala, and whose silky, long-cooked eggplant bits could convert eggplant skeptics; chicken, chickpea and potato ($14) — a pleasant curry distinguished by unexpected saffron-like notes.
Flavorful ground-beef and mixed-veggie curries are also available inside snack-sized hand pies ($6) with flaky, slightly sweet, house-made puff pastry shells. You can’t go wrong with either filling.
The ground-beef curry perked up a seared, rather thin all-beef wiener inside a hot dog bun in the curry dog ($8). Call it Hisham’s South African answer to the American chili dog.
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Other menu highlights
Hisham’s South African answer to the Indian samosa — the spicy ground beef Malay samoosa — is the least expensive menu item ($3) and one of my favorites. It’s a thin, triangular pastry with a crinkly (sometimes a tad oily) house-made shell similar to a spring-roll wrapper that’s densely packed with a seemingly zippier version of the ground-beef curry.
Malva pudding ($5) is another South African classic that’s a must. At Hisham’s, this was a slab of warm, moist cake draped in almost pudding-like creme anglaise. Think addictive sticky toffee pudding, and you’re getting close.
The two average crab cakes I received in a nightly special ($14) were outshined by their sides of dal and mashed potatoes. A better choice: Asking Hisham — who was warm, friendly and appeared unflappable whether slammed on a hot evening or during a business-was-slow rainstorm — for more samoosas and malva pudding.
Hisham's Food Truck
Where: Locations and hours vary, visit streetfoodfinder.com/HishamsFood for info.
Contact: 614-565-4198; www.hishamsfood.com
Price range: $3 to $14
Ambience: orange food truck with quick, efficient service provided by a warm and friendly one-man-band of a chef-operator
Children's menu: no
Reservations: no
Accessible: yes
Liquor license: no
Quick click: Several of the flavorful dishes from this fine food truck, which advertises a locally rare South African Cape Malay menu, bear similarities to Indian cuisine classics.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Hisham's Food truck: South African Cape Malay fare in Columbus
