Pork Longanisapan (homemade sweet pork sausage patty, fried egg, tomato, green onion and mayonnaise served on pandesal) with camote chips from Merienda, Belmont. Served by Merienda.
A sunny yellow food truck stands out among the nondescript white offices at 519 Marine View Ave. in Belmont, boldly emblazoned with the word “Meryenda” and the tagline “Home of Philippine Pandesalwich.” Walk up to the window and you’ll meet Anton Yulo, a former software engineer whose passion for the flavors of his home country led him into the food and beverage world.
“I’d worked in tech for 20 years and I was pretty burned out by it,” Yulo said. “I thought, ‘I need a year off.’ So I took that off and said, ‘If I ever come back, I have a choice between working on a passion project or jumping into corporate,’ and I chose this.”
Merienda owner Anton Yulo looks out of his food truck in Belmont, photo by Adrienne Mitchell.
Yulo opened Merienda for regular business in late January, serving what he calls “pandesalwiches,” Filipino-style sandwiches served with traditional pandesal (a soft, buttery, slightly sweet bread roll). Merienda’s menu, created by Yulo and executive chef Richard Moya, includes sandwich versions of traditional Filipino dishes such as bistec (beef stew with soy sauce and citrus), Spam silog (fried rice with Spam, egg and garlic) and chicken adobo (chicken in a soy sauce and vinegar stew). Vegetarians can also enjoy Merienda’s “pandesalwich” made with Impossible longganisa (a Filipino sausage). For sweet options, there’s buko pandan bread pudding topped with coconut caramel and toasted coconut.
“We’re trying to apply a Filipino template to American comfort food,” Yulo says, “and our sandwiches are a lot bigger than a slider, but not as wide as a burger, so we didn’t want to call them burgers.”
Meryenda in Belmont serves up a vegetarian pandesalwich made with Impossible beef. Courtesy of Meryenda.
Yulo grew up in the Philippines, moved to California for college, and settled in the Bay Area for a career in computer science. Though he has no prior cooking experience, he’s a longtime foodie.
“My grandfather would take all 10 of his grandchildren and their extended family out to dinner every Saturday, and we would always try a new restaurant,” he says. “I think that exposed us to a wide variety of foods. I think I was born to be a foodie from an early age.”
Belmont-based food truck Merienda specializes in the pandesal sandwich, a Filipino-American sandwich made with pandesal. Photo by Adrienne Mitchell.
About five years ago, he began to realize that the flavors of his hometown were hard to find in the Bay Area.
“Belmont is totally devoid of Filipino food with the closure of Sunrice,” Yulo says, “so our mission is to broaden people’s perspective of Filipino food, ideally in a comforting way.”
The term “merienda” is derived from Spanish and generally means an afternoon snack, which includes pandesal.
“We came together around the idea of food that is comforting and has a sociable feel, the kind of food you think of when you have merienda at home,” Yulo said.
Buko pandan bread pudding made with pandesal from Meryenda in Belmont and topped with coconut caramel and toasted coconut. Courtesy of Meryenda.
Meryenda is open most Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at its Belmont commissary kitchen, and on Saturdays at the South San Francisco Farmers Market.
Yulo said operating a food truck comes with some unique challenges, including a lack of county-licensed food truck vendors along the peninsula.
“Any food truck you see here or there is probably from one of three places: South San Francisco, Hayward or San Jose,” Yulo says. “In between that triangle of space, there’s nothing, a total lack of it. Sometimes there’s this commercial kitchen or restaurant that might be able to accommodate one or two.”
Additionally, laws governing food trucks vary from city to city. For example, it’s legal to operate food trucks on public property in cities like Redwood City, Burlingame and Millbrae, but not in cities like Belmont, San Mateo and San Carlos, Yulo said. Regulations also vary by county. For example, Santa Clara County requires food trucks to have insect screens, but San Mateo County does not.
Meryenda owner Anton Yulo (left) and head chef Richard Moya. Courtesy of Meryenda.
Yulo hopes to bring attention to Filipino cuisine through merienda and eventually open her own establishment.
“I’d like to see Filipino food become as popular as Thai or Vietnamese food,” he says. “I’d like to see merienda on every street corner, where you can really enjoy a coffee and a sandwich.”
Meryenda, 519 Marine View Ave. Unit F, Belmont, 650-200-0293, Instagram: @eatmeryenda. Open most Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
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