The Bay Area’s Only Puerto Rican Food Truck Is Coming Back

Many Friday nights, I’ve pulled up to the Richmond Costco to grab a quick, comforting dinner — not of the warehouse retailer’s famously cheap hot dogs and rotisserie chicken, but something much better: a heaping arroz con gandules combo plate from the food truck parked outside.

Such are the pleasures of Boriqua Kitchen. As the Bay Area’s only Puerto Rican food truck, it has routinely drawn big crowds at its regular stops — in Richmond, Vallejo and Oakland — where customers line up for chef-owner Darren Anthony Lamboy’s signature “#21 Roberto Clemente” (fried boneless chicken thigh pieces with rice, beans and sweet plantains); its crisp, garlicky tostones; and perhaps my favorite empanadas in the Bay — the deep-fried Puerto Rican variety, stuffed chock-full with incredibly juicy, well-seasoned ground beef.

All until this past spring, anyway, when Lamboy announced that the business was closing, at least until he was able to secure enough funds to purchase a new food truck.

Good news, though, for longtime customers in need of their sofrito and mayuketchup fix: Just three months later, Lamboy was in fact able to buy that new truck. Now, if all goes according to plan, the chef will launch Boriqua Kitchen 2.0 in the next couple of weeks — with an updated menu he promises will be bigger and better than ever.

Born and raised in Jersey City, New Jersey (with its robust Puerto Rican community), Lamboy has been a staple of the Bay Area’s small but growing Puerto Rican food scene since the mid-2010s. He briefly helped out at Borinquen Soul — a legendary, now-shuttered spot inside an Oakland convenience store — before attending culinary school and then launching Boriqua Kitchen in 2017.

But after six and a half years, the old trailer had accumulated a lot of wear and tear and needed to be brought up to code, Lamboy explains. “It served its purpose,” he says. “It was time to get a new one.”

Part of what the shiny new truck, along with a new commissary kitchen in Albany̦, will allow Lamboy to do is expand his menu beyond its six or seven best-known staples. So he plans to bring back his alcapurria — the custardy, oblong beef picadillo fritters — which many regard to be the best in the Bay Area, but rarely showed up on the menu the past couple of years. He’ll serve mini mofongos (mashed fried plantains) and, as an occasional special, the slow-roasted, crispy-skinned pork shoulder known as pernil.

Indeed, Lamboy says he’s most excited about the opportunity to offer more “authentic” homestyle chef’s specials — dishes like sancocho, a hearty meat-and-vegetable stew, and his homemade rum cake. “That’s what I want to be known for: being authentic and consistent,” Lamboy says. “Those are the two things I take to the heart.”

As for Boriqua Kitchen’s grand reopening, Lamboy says the new truck is currently en route. If there isn’t an unexpected delay, he hopes to relaunch the business with an all-day celebration in the park — maybe at Lake Merritt, though he hasn’t yet decided on the exact time and place.

Follow Boriqua Kitchen on Instagram for updates on the food truck’s schedule and reopening date.