Street Eatin'

Coming Soon: Outside the Box Paleo Food Truck

A trio of caterers bring the paleo way to the people.

By Christopher Werner June 20, 2012

Donna Denina, Charles Aguiling, and Marizel Yuen: Bringing paleo to the people via Outside the Box. Photo courtesy eat-otb.com.

Paleo-centric food trucks have taken to the streets in other parts of the country, and now Seattle, it’s your turn.

"There’s a need out there for it," says Charles Aguiling, alluding to the lack of options for paleo people like himself and Donna Denina and Marizel Yuen. The trio is launching Outside the Box, the city’s first mobile kitchen dedicated to the diet eschewing grains, dairy, sugar, and processed foods. "There’s nowhere to get that during the day."

The three are longtime culinarians and currently operate Cata Catering Company. Aguiling and Denina go way back and met Yuen at a CrossFit gym (paleo is big in those circles). The idea for a food truck was thrown out about a year ago, and as Eater recently noted, has since resulted in a Kickstarter campaign. The response, say Aguiling and Yuen, has been huge.

The menu doesn’t commit to a set cuisine but does incorporate some foods from the Philippines, where Yuen and Denina have roots. Despite the region’s heavy-handed use of soy and fish sauces, Yuen assures their options prescribe to the paleo way—and are delicious. "We’ve taken a lot of recipes and simplified them. It’s about tasting the food in its natural form."

Customers can expect a core set of offerings, such as chili, carnitas, Thai papaya salad, or a pot roast-cum-beef stew. In place of a grain, Yuen finely grinds up cauliflower until it resembles a consistency similar to rice, then tops it with curry or coconut milk. The three are reaching out to regional farmers and market purveyors in hopes of making the menu as locally focused as possible.

The Kickstar campaign has about a month left. If all goes as planned the truck will roll out by the end of August and hit up various neighborhoods in both Seattle and Bellevue. Until then Aguiling, Denina, and Yuen are stocking fozen foods at CrossFit gyms in Renton and Burien and catering on the side.

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