Each semester there is a shift in available dinning on campus because of the rotating basis of food trucks spread around campus. This semester Tiger Dining added two Asian inspired trucks to the lineup.
“They both offer unique menu items such as a traditional Vietnamese sandwich, bubble tea, or authentic noodle bowls featuring various meats,” said Candice Nagel, director of marketing & guest experience for Tiger Dining.
Golden Tiger and Noodle Fun are two new food trucks unique to Auburn. Both provide a wide variety of Asian cuisine.
“Golden Tiger and Noodle Fun both began operating on campus at the beginning of this semester,” Nagel said. “However, the owners of each do have other concepts currently on campus. The owner of Golden Tiger also operates the Hibachi truck and the Chick N A Box venue in Terrell. The Noodle Fun owner also operates Sugar Time inside Terrell.”
James Dimaculangan is that owner, operating both Habachi and the new Golden Tiger food trucks. Golden Tiger, at first glance, may seem similar to Habachi but it provides a whole new dining experience.
“It’s a Pan- Asian truck,” Dimaculangan said. “It’s basically serving food that encompasses all of Asia. I’m trying to serve food that isn’t your typical corner store Asian restaurant. We’re trying to be a little experimental and we’re trying to get the students to try a little cuisine from each country.”
Golden Tiger serves a variety of food to please all students at Auburn.
“We’re serving like that Von meat from Vietnam, the Thai Curry from Thailand, Beam and Bop from South Korea, Gimbap from South Korea and we plan on introducing a couple other countries, maybe some Malaysian food or Filipino food,” Dimaculangan said.
The cuisine offered at Golden Tiger encompasses not only traditional Asian dishes, but ingredients from other types of cuisine.
“My favorite dish would be the Von meat,” Dimaculangan. “It’s a Vietnamese sandwich which is like this French Vietnamese hybrid. They use a French baguette and then they have Asian pork. It’s a really good fusion dish.”
The Dimaculangan owned Habachi truck serves more traditional Asian food, along with many other common Asian restaurants. Dimaculangan wanted to bring something new to Auburn students with this truck.
“I just wanted to offer the students food that’s not typical from their corner Asian restaurant,” Dimaculangan said. “These are foods that are sort of underrepresented and I think that once you sort of start to try these, you’ll start to open your eyes to other types of Asian cuisine other than your typical Chinese, Sushi, that kind of stuff.”
Noodle Fun is the other new Asian inspired truck on Auburn’s campus. Cherry Zou owns this truck as well as a Chinese restaurant inside of Asian Market and the Asian Market in Opelika.
“The name of the Noodle Fun, it means noodle and fun,” Zou said. “F-U-N, that’s the same pronunciation of rice in Chinese. So in Chinese it would be noodle and rice. That’s the special meaning of our truck.”
Zou’s truck has many unique offerings to go with the noodles and rice, such as bubble tea. Bubble tea can be found at the Noodle Fun truck and Sugar Time, both owned by Zou.
“The noodle part, we have different broth and meat,” Zou said. “So, if customers want a specialized noddle they can request that to. And the rice, it’s kind of the most popular, authentic dishes which we be between authentic and American Chinese.”
Noodle Fun began its run at Auburn in January 2018 and Zou has seen success from her new truck so far. Their most popular dish is roasted duck Zou said. Typically, the truck runs out of roasted duck at about noon or 1 p.m. each day.
“We’ve been on the campus for three weeks now and it’s really popular. It’s been accepted by everyone, it’s not only Chinese, international students. It’s American students too.”
The decision to bring an authentic Chinese cuisine food truck to Auburn’s campus was simple for Zou. She had already become a part of Auburn with her restaurants both on and off campus.
“I see a lot of international students or either global students, there from every other country all over the world and they want some real, authentic food on campus. And we are the only authentic Chinse truck on campus now.”
Tiger dining has strived to reach all ends of campus with each food trucks to give all students a chance to experience what each truck has to offer.
“The food trucks operate on a rotation so that students around campus have an opportunity to experience as many of the food truck options as possible,” Nagel said. “The University Donut is open on campus from 7am-10am daily and once they leave at 10 another truck takes their place on the corner of Tichenor. We currently are running "Food Truck Tuesdays" at the School of Nursing to allow those students more options. The truck that runs on Tuesday there is different each week.”
There are seasonal food trucks that will return to campus shortly.
“We will be bringing back both Scoops and Smooth N Groove later in the semester once the weather warms up, most likely after we come back from Spring Break,” Nagel said.
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