Far From Home Cafe (Food Truck)

Love Park
16th and JFK
Philadelphia, PA 19102
Website

Far from home, this food truck serves a mash-up of comfort-style foods from around the globe. Look for their brightly painted truck at Love Park around lunchtime, and follow their twitter feed to see what specials they are serving for the day.

If you have any question about them being far from home, just talk to them for a minute, and their friendliness might shock you. It is not your typical Philadelphia greeting. More like you just showed up at an old family friend's diner and they want you to be well received and well feed.

I wanted some of the delicious sounding empanadas, and the tacos looked like too good of a deal to pass up (2 for $5). I mentioned Fidel Gastro after reading on "the twitter" that it was the word of the day, and got a soda for a quarter. Like Tyson Bee's, they give you a card to hold until your order is up. This one was from the deck of an Old Maid set. Might carry some negative connotations depending on who is holding it.

 

The beef tacos were nothing fancy, but the ground beef was well seasoned and the ingredients were packed to the top of the soft flour tortillas. Beef, lettuce, tomato, onion, black olives and cheese. They were definitely a comforting, Americanized version of tacos, which sometimes is just what the doctor ordered. Two were definitely a filling meal.

The empanadas were what I was the most excited about, however, as they offered three different varietals, Puerto-Rican style, Argentin-ish style, and mac and cheese (you might call that "American style"). They came out perfectly warm, but not too hot on the inside, with a deep golden crust that was not the least bit greasy (the beef inside took care of that).

The Puerto Rican might have been the most flavorful, with ground beef, cheddar cheese, and spices. I really liked this empanada. It had a perfect crust, that made the perfect vessel to hold the juicy fillings.

The Argentin-ish beef empanada was another winner (inside tip, they all were), containing more of the delicious ground beef, but this time spruced up with raisins, green olives, onion, egg and paprika with a soft cream cheese (the "ish") instead of the traditional hard cheese. What was remarkable was that all three of these meat applications had completely different flavor profiles.

 

The mac and cheese was comfort food at its finest. The mac was tangy from the addition of sour cream, and had a hint of spice from the copious amount of black pepper that was blended throughout.

I am always a fan of Philly gaining more weight - I mean great, cheap places to eat and Far From Home fills a comfort food void in the heart of Center City. They were sold out of the delicious sounding hotdogs, and I will return to sample the burger, texas dog, and frito pie (one of my favorites) in the near future.