Dee Dee – Northern Thai Street Food

Just because food is served from a truck, you shouldn’t consider it fast food. Lakana Trubiana doesn’t simply make a bunch of sauce and cook meat and then play mix-and-match from inside Dee Dee's black truck in East Austin. She prepares meals from scratch, but loyal customers know it’s worth the extra few minutes for dishes like a minced pork laab moo that carries a double-fisted pop of sour (lime juice) and heat (smoked chili powder). Trubiana is from Northern Thailand, so you can expect some heat in most of her dishes, even the unassuming papaya salad. Don’t let its cool name fool you: The heat in the serving of shredded papayas and green beans flecked with roasted peanuts may be invisible, but it is real.