Thai street food lives up to truck’s name

Grilled pork, dumplings, spud ‘very delicious’

Like so many restaurant workers at the height of the pandemic, Pear Chaisitthisinsuk found herself at loose ends last year. With hours slashed at the Thai place where she worked and no certain way to replace the lost income, she stayed home and immersed herself in cooking. All day, every day, a party of one with no outlet for sharing what she made.

The flashbulb moment came late last year. “I love cooking,” she said. “Why don’t I start doing something on my own? The next day, I was meeting with the trailer builder.”

From that meeting came the inspiration for Aroy Ver, a trailer specializing in the food of Chaisitthisinsuk’s native Thailand. Aroy Ver, roughly “very delicious” in Thai, opened in February and in August moved to a regular spot just north of the Pearl at Broadway News, already home to two “worth a drive” food trucks in this series: Carnitas Don Raúl and Mister Diablo.

Aroy Ver fits right in.

Best dish: The sweet caramelized glaze of grilled, marinated pork on a stick paired with the salty vinegar sharpness of nam jim jaew sauce made moo ping skewers ($12) the perfect entry point for the wider Aroy Ver

experience.

Other dishes: Chaisitthisinsuk calls what she does Thai street food, which is why you won’t find the usual roster of pad Thai and tom kha gai soup. Instead, there’s a lush, mild stew of sweet pork called moo wan ($11) and a Thai omelet called khai jiao ($9)

with whorls and ridges like a topographical map of breakfast halfway around the world.

To fire up the nostalgia of the Capri Sun generation, Aroy Ver packages its milky-sweet Thai tea ($4) in a sealed, cooled-down pouch with a pointy-ended straw for poking through.

Fried potatoes speak the universal language of outdoor festival food, and Aroy Ver’s Spin

Spin Tato ($3.50) took it to a higher place with a perfect spiralcut spud mounted on a stick and fried crispy where it should be, soft everywhere else, dusted with a funky blend of sour-spicy tom yum and cheese spice powders.

Even a Thai standard like papaya salad got an overhaul, its crisp slices of papaya, carrot and peanuts served in a plastic cup meant to be shaken up with a little cup of tangy Thai salad dressing for an invigorating, made-to-order salad ($8).

For more comfort and less street-food bravado, Aroy Ver came through with fortifying khao pad fried rice ($11) loaded with tender white-meat chicken chicken. Bouncy Aroy Bomb pork dumplings were outfitted with a blanket of cilantro and scallions ($9), and a quartet of crispy, cigar-size fried spring rolls ($5) were filled with glass noodles, ground chicken and a housemade sweet chile sauce I’d pour over pancakes.

Speaking of something sweet, Aroy Ver showed command of a Thai classic with simple mango sticky rice ($5) and brought a sense of whimsy with little bears made from coconut milk and gelatin ($5).

Mike Sutter / Staff Moo ping, or grilled pork skewers, are served with rice and Thai chile sauce, and milky-sweet Thai tea comes in a sealed bag — kind of like a juice pouch.