Staples: The Cap'n Crunch Tilapia Burrito from Cucina Zapata
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Robert Zapata with his best-selling menu item
Carolyn Wyman
Carolyn Wyman
The first sensation is of a fresh flour tortilla, then something like a fresh tomato and avocado salad, before hitting the crispy crunch of something slightly sweet, then flaky fishy, then spicy creamy.
It's the multi-flavored, multi-textured Cap'n Crunch Tilapia Burrito, the much-Yelped about best-seller of the Cucina Zapata food truck at Drexel University.
"It's our Big Mac," said truck namesake/owner Robert Zapata, 37, of his signature dish. It's also "everything I love about American melting-pot cuisine: The Mexican tortilla, the Asian spicy mayo, the Cap'n Crunch, which is American and something almost everyone is familiar with."
In a cereal bowl, maybe. But on fried fish?
"I knew it tasted good but a lot of people were skeptical, even disgusted" at first, Zapata admitted.
The Cap'n Crunch is emblematic of an eccentric street food/fusion menu that almost sunk Cap'n Zapata's food truck ship.
It was February 2011: well before the artisian food truck boom. Where almost every other truck on Ludlow Street was metal or white and selling gyros, falafels or cheesesteaks, Zapata had his decorated by a graffiti artist and sold Thai short rib and chicken satay tacos, and sweet potato chicken curry along with the Cap'n Crunch. "You can't come in here with this [menu]," the truck's previous owner scolded. "You're an American: Sell hot dogs."
"Which hurt because I'm American but I love Mexican food and lived in Thailand for five years," which is where the Jersey native and Drexel hospitality grad first developed the Cucina Zapata concept of "Thai proteins in a Mexican format."
Zapata's experiments with fried coatings — potato chips, Doritos, Frosted Flakes and Goldfish cracker— date to high school. His original fun idea for a fish dish for his truck was Goldfish-encrusted but the reality was "really salty."
Customers liked the items that did make his menu so little that by month three, Zapata was contemplating closing. Then someone showed up to say that underground fans of his new truck cuisine had voted him into the finals of Philly's first Vendy Awards, where Zapata got People's Choice and enough publicity to keep on truckin' — although he discounted the Cap'n Crunch Tilapia Burrito to encourage trial for almost a year before it caught on.
Zapata's problem today? How to make up to 200 Cap' Crunch burritos to-order a day with only two fryers.
