Eat at Recess is apart of San Diego’s ever growing Food Truck scene, offering up certified humane food as well as organic and local ingredients. They’re also green-friendly – their containers are fully compostable and made from renewable energy sources to help do their part to stay green. Another unique thing about Eat at Recess if their online ordering system which will text you when you’re order is ready to be picked up. They have some regular stops around town for lunch Monday through Friday and I visited them a few times near UTC to get a feel for their food truck offerings.
[Remedial Tots – Crispy bacon-salt seasoned tots topped with cheddar and Recess signature sauce – $3]
The tater tots from Eat at Recess are a must-try item and my favorite thing from this truck. I was in love the first time I had these. They have regular tots that are just fried and seasoned, but why do that when for a buck more you can get cheddar, bacon salt, and sauce put on them?!
The tater tots are wonderfully crisp on the outside with a nice creamy interior. It’s the perfect crisp-creamy combination and the cheese, Recess sauce (it’s a slighty spicy sauce from what I detected) and bacon salt make for a winning combination. The bacon salt adds a hint of smokiness and a good touch of salt to these tots.
[Gold Star Grilled Cheese – Not what mom was making unless she owned a cheese shop. We melt thick slices of aged sharp cheddar, havarti, and monterey jack between fresh sourdough bread. – $4.50 / add bacon $1.50]
Also on my first visit I got this grilled cheese sandwich… which, quite frankly, I wasn’t too happy with. You can see the cheese wasn’t properly melted and the bread wasn’t really grilled – just mildly browned – making for a dry and slightly cold grilled cheese. I also sprung for the extra bacon which was the best part about the sandwich.
I only ate half of the sandwich – I ate the rest of it for dinner that night when I could properly re-grill it and melt all of the cheeses – then it was the perfect sandwich.
The next week I informed the guy at the truck about the sandwich and he said he would bring it up with the chefs. Did he? I have no idea since I didn’t order the grilled cheese again.
[The Bully – There’s one in every class. We take a 1/3lb grass-fed patty, top it with applewood smoked bacon, slather on spicy BBQ sauce, grilled onions and cheddar. You’ll gladly give us your lunch money. – $7.50]
The following week I opted to try out another one of their “hot” sandwiches – this time going for the Bully burger – which is pretty much a BBQ Cheeseburger. This again had a significant lack of melted cheese – which made me kind of sad. The burger itself was good – juicy, well made burger with that lovely bacon on top – but a little more attention to detail could have made this stellar. A toasted bun and melted cheese would have gone a long way to making this a better meal. As it was, it wasn’t bad, I just felt it could have been done better.
[AP Tots – Crispy, seasoned golden tots with truffle oil, topped with feta – $3]
On my third visit I tried the AP Tots instead of my beloved Remedial tots (which I had twice in a row). The tots themselves were quite good, as usual, but I found the flavoring and seasonings on them made them too salty for my tastes. I don’t know if they just got too much seasonings shaken on or if the feta pushed them overboard but I didn’t quite enjoy these tots as much.
[Chess Club – Grilled free-range chicken breast stacked high with avocado, bacon, lettuce and tomato. Top it all off with house-made garlic aioli on fresh-baked sour dough. – $7.50]
Since I hadn’t had good experiences with their hot sandwiches, I switched over to try a cold sandwich and got this Chess Club chicken breast sandwich instead. This was a much better sandwich than the hot ones as I wasn’t expecting anything to be grilled, toasted, or melted. The chicken was juicy and not overdone, the sourdough bread was perfect with a good chew with plenty of avocado and other fixings to make this a good lunch choice.
Eat at Recess has some hits and misses. I’d definitely go for some of their stellar tater tots if you decide to visit and to get a cold sandwich instead of something hot! They have some good vegetarian options on their menu and I appreciate their awareness of trying to be a green and eco-friendly food truck. Kudos to them!
Eat at Recess
760-624-TOTS(8687)
Twitter: @eatatrecess
I am craving these tater tots NOW. ps. I think it is totally appropriate that my anti-spam word was ‘DEEPFRY’ Don’t you agree? 🙂
Okay, yes, that was totally an appropriate anti-spam word – how amusing! And yeah, their tater tots are some of the best!
What a rookie mistake to mess up a grilled cheese sandwich! Isn’t that one of the first things everyone learns to cook in life? Glad that you were able to find some things that they do well.
Remedial tots sound just perfect – no need to get all fancy pants with the AP stuff! That’s too bad the grilled cheese was not that grilled. I hope they get that fixed; seems like it would just need more time on the grill or something.
Everything looks so good, it would be hard for me to just chose one. And more than one kind of tots — my mind is fully blown! I’ll be on the lookout for the truck.
Hi Alyssa – Yeah, the grilled cheese made me sad. I don’t think it’s too picky to think all the cheese should be totally melted. At least their tater tots made me very, very happy.
Hi Leanne – I hope so, too. It does seem like a really easy fix!
Hi Darlene – They also have just plain old tots, but why go for that when you can get them cheese?!
Wow! I love your food pix! Truly beautiful photography!
haha – my word ver is Forks, as in Bella Swan lives in Forks, Washington.
cool concept and clever names for their food. i would probably like the remedial tots (ooh, i never had anything with bacon salt before) rather than the AP. Feta cheese = barf for me.
Hi Rob – Thank you 🙂
Hi CC – Nice! Yay Forks! Breaking Dawn next month…! I did really dig the names of everything on their menu. One of the reasons why I wanted to visit them even though it’s a bit of a drive to go to UTC area on my lunch break.