The Ginger Armadillo

Great food truck, one of the best in Austin in my opinion. Food is well seasoned and you receive generous portions for the price. No idea why there are a few one and two star reviews, they must not appreciate good food. Definitely recommend the smoked duck pot pie and mardi gras slaw.

The first time I tried The Ginger Armadillo was when they were offering their smoked brisket meatloaf with a side of vinaigrette green beans. After an afternoon of shaking coworkers by the collar and screaming «HAVE YOU TRIED THE MEATLOAF?!» I can officially say that I’m a die-​hard fan. Every visit since, even though the dishes are new and I may never have that brisket again, has left me with a smile on my face.

I’ve had her food several times and it’s always AMAZING!!!

Ehkk. The dish I ordered here was very unappealing, borderline terrible. I struggled to finish it because the taste started to make me cringe with every bite. I was lured over by the promise that this was «Austin’s Gourmet Chuckwagon,» which as it turns out is the boldest lie that any food vendor has told me since I moved here. Sure, the menu looked enticing when I read it off the board, but when I saw the food and actually ate it, this felt like a very poor decision. I wanted a vegetarian dish for once and saw a spaghetti squash that sounded appetizing. I also ordered kimchi potato salad on the side, because I grew up around kimchi and jump at any chance to get it, especially in fusion dishes. But I was sorely disappointed here.
From the moment I was handed the food, I was skeptical. The spaghetti squash looked soggy, and it turned out to be even more so when I took a bite. It had this pungent, sickly taste that I just couldn’t get rid of, making the whole dish thoroughly unenjoyable. I normally like squash no matter how you cook it, but there was no good flavor that came through here. As for the kimchi potato salad, it looked bland and tasted bland. The cabbage in this dish doesn’t deserve to be called kimchi, because it had very little seasoning and didn’t remind me of real kimchi at all. Even for regular cabbage, this was disappointing. The potatoes had very little flavor either.
An all-​around epic fail. I hope this doesn’t describe the rest of their menu. However, I don’t plan to find out.

Truck came to San Jacinto bldg today. I ordered the Oktoberfest Wurstl advertised as house smoked pork and beef sausages with red sauerkraut. I posted a pic here. The sauerkraut wasnt red and the sausages were very rare. Some spots just raw, really. The 3 slices of homemade pickles were good, but not worth the $ 8+tip I paid for the meal. My coworkers got the smoked veggie pomodoro and they said it tasted like liquid smoke and wasnt very good. Pretty disapponting.

This place was great! They came by our office, and I was so excited that they had a lot of vegetarian options. I had the smoked veggie quesadilla with the cucumber mint slaw.
The quesadilla was amazing. It had that delicious smokey flavor, the eggplant was tender, and the cheese was perfectly melted.
The slaw was a little bell-​pepper heavy, but was seasoned perfectly. I actually don’t love bell peppers, but they worked in the dish.
Plus, I got a free coke with the combo. I’ll take it!

Real tasty food at a super-​reasonable price: You can typically only say one of those things about most food trucks’ offerings, but the Ginger Armadillo pleasantly surprised me by checking both boxes from my meal-​time mental checklist.
I ordered the pork belly BLT with a side of bacon and spinach slaw (and convinced a small-​stomached coworker eating with me to share one of his mushroom tamales). The pork belly was thinly sliced and smoky, perfect for a sandwich — in fact, it might be the best use of pork belly I’ve ever had on a sandwich; it didn’t fall apart into a meaty, mushy-​bread-​making mess like most thicker, harder-​to-​chew cuts do. It came with a few fresh jalapeño peppers slices and some sweet homemade pickled cucumbers and was served on sweet, doughy bread. The mushrooms in the tamales were diced to the consistency of ground meat and made for a surprisingly rich vegetarian option.

NIce price for such large portions. I had the Mom’s special which is basically the cheesiest tuna casserole ever. WOW, was it cheesy. It has orvietto pasta (sp?) and ahi tuna. Altogether solid, but I’m reaching for the Tums already and I’m not done yet.
The kale slaw side was tasty but in my opinion, too salty.
Might come back for something else next time, like the chicken fajitas. Not bad.

I only tried one item, but since there is a limited menu I think every item offered should be good. The mac and cheese, with shell pasta and a beer cheese sauce, was okay. But the chunky cubed pieces of brisket in it were terrible. The grayish-​brown appearance of the brisket was unappetizing, and the brisket texture was chewy and tough. They only provide plastic forks (no knives) and it was an impossible task to use that fork to break apart the brisket meat. My friends tried the zucchini burger and that looked much more appetizing and they said it was good.

Food truck. Work. Right across the street. You get the picture.
I ordered something that said orcchiette pasta, three cheese Bechamel, ahi tuna, and green onions. I got tuna potato salad. Like the kind your grandmother made for funerals. With corn flakes. The corn flakes weren’t cripy– they were kind of rubbery and I didn’t see any pasta, maybe it was just extremely over cooked??? The dish overall has the same consistency and color so it was difficult to tell what was going on.
I also as still confused as to what I ate… was it potato salad, was it pasta salad??? The only thing I’m sure of is the tuna.
On the good side, the tuna, (though also over cooked) was whole tuna (not canned) and the overall taste was fine, though a the whole experience was a bit strange.
Pricing was good. They were out next to dock and roll which was charging $ 15 a sandwich and my meal was $ 7.50.

This was my first time eating at Ginger Armadillo, and it was pretty good. I had the Jalapeño Pesto BBQ Pulled Pork tacos. The flavors were really nice together, quite delicious! My only complaint is that is was WAY over salted, which thew everything off a bit. I’m hoping it was just an off day. :)

Just finished inhaling the pork tacos! And I mean inhale because they were so tasty! Delicious pulled pork topped with pesto, tasty cabbage and pickled jalapeños on the side.
At only $ 2.50 a taco these are an amazing bang for the buck. Tons of fresh and amazing flavors plus a generous portion. Definitely a new go to truck for me!
They post up at Adelbert’s Brewery regularly and lucky for me, I work there and can grab the amazingness for dinner from now on!

They were at my office complex for lunch.
Their March menu offered a smoked beef stew that was very tasty. A bit runny for my tastes, but the flavors were good as was the amount of meat in the stew.
I went for their $ 8.50 combo ($ 9.20 after tax) and the herb potato salad was great. I chose the cinnamon coffee for my beverage and it was very good as well.
Hopefully they come back regularly as this is an affordable and tasty trailer. It’s not going to change your world or open your eyes to some new cuisine, but it’s something that i would definitely go back to and recommend to others.

From the food truck parked near my office I ordered the pot pie, which was meager in portion, runny like soup, and impossible to finish, as they didn’t provide a spoon. The flavor was fine, but unremarkable. The puff pastry placed atop was very nice, but unable to rescue what was underneath.
I also ordered the slaw, the first bite of which slammed off all of my taste buds and replaced all experience with pain. Did they spill the hot pepper sauce into my serving? I threw it out.

Ginger Armadillo came by our office once every 2 weeks for lunch. I got the lamb meatloaf, which tasted awesome at first, but was a bit too much meat for me.
However, the description was «Twin County Lamb meatloaf w/​onions, mushrooms, dandelion greens, smoked tomato salsa & Granny Ila’s pickles & jalapenos». I got the meatloaf, salsa and jalapeño. No sign of greens, other pickles, onions or mushrooms. Maybe the greens, onions and mushrooms were all mixed in the meatloaf? I couldn’t tell if they just forgot to give me those or not.

The Ginger Armadillo provides great catering at reasonable prices. They’ve catered events at my house 3 times during the last 6 months for 15 – 30 people at a time. The food is excellent, there’s plenty to eat, they show up on time, and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. Highly recommended.

I had the chicken pot pie and the cheddar potato bisque. The employees were friendly and the woman serving me even went as far as to give me the bisque at the price of a side because I couldn’t choose between the two!
I love pot pie and always get excited to try it when I see it on menus, but it is usually disappointing. This was not the case here! The gravy was delicious and so was the chicken and puff pastry. The pastry was a bit large in proportion to the stew part of things, but that is solved as easily as peeling off a couple layers of flaky goodness (and eating it by itself later because you can’t resist).
The bisque was a chunky, potato laden cheesy bowl of goodness. Potatoes are by far my favorite food item and this was like a wonderful mixture of a cheesy baked potato and a potato soup. Perfect for a cold rainy day.
Their menus change monthly and the items are always very diverse. Don’t let the word «diverse» scare you though — I think of myself as a fairly picky eater, and I’ve still yet to see their menu and not find something I would eat. Everything they use in their food is organic or farm fresh. Also, their prices are VERY fair compared to other food trucks I have seen. You can get an entrée, side item, and a drink for $ 8.50. I have been to plenty of food trucks where you can barely get a basket of fries with stuff thrown on them for that price. Definitely try this place!

I ate my way through Austin last week and Ginger Armadillo was definitely one of the highlights. The dude and I visited for lunch together, which is always a bonus because we get to try twice the tasty treats.
I got the Green Chili Chicken and the only thing better than its chickeny, juicy deliciousness, the goat cheese pesto. YUM — but how can you go wrong with those two ingredients? The dude got the Georgia Pork Ribs and they are still on both of our minds. Local peaches + Coke = sweet summery savory pig. They literally fell off the bone and straight into my belly. The hash and the beet slaw (try it, you’ll like it!) were both awesome and a good complement to both dishes.
Only sad I can’t be a regular at this classy little chuckwagon. Could be worth the 3 hour drive when a new seasonal menu rolls out, though…

After the owners complained about being extorted by Unilocal for overpriced advertising because of my initial poor review, they asked me to try their food again and so I obliged. Unfortunately the first bite was into a chicken bone in the fajita. Clearly they do use freshly smoked chickens and process them themselves, and it did taste fresh but they don’t have good quality control, nor did the chicken itself have any flavor to speak of.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the sides again either, although they are clearly fresh and homemade, they tasted very flat, in my opinion. The brown beer potato salad tasted the same as the first time I had it and definitely needs salt to bring out the flavor as it is very bland, and the mustard relish has no acidity to make it taste like anything. Perhaps from too much beer thinning it out? Not sure, but they don’t seem to change what doesn’t work.
Not only that, but within a couple days of my wife and my horrendous experience, we got a sob story with excuses as to why their food was admittedly off on the day we visited, and no taste testing was done, as well as numerous miraculous 5 star reviews overnight extolling the amazing deliciousness that were the exact items we ordered and that were terrible, including a couple first and only reviews from their friends in an effort to counter our legitimate reviews. Not only that but the owners or their friends also wrote me messages from an anonymous account thinly veiled as random people who I’ve never spoke to berating my right to my opinion after only 1 sampling of their lackluster food. How many people have one of the worst dining experiences of their lives, and immediately think, «I want to try that again?» Not many…
Not to mention they accuse my wife of writing a useless review and being passive aggressive which is laughable because if you look at her reviews they are so heavily skewed towards glowing 4 and 5 star reviews, that the Ginger Armadillo is the absolute only 1 star review she has ever written, and with good reason. Apparently they also think being Canadian is a reason her review is off base…
Now who are the hosers?

Oh my lord! The Sloppy Kolache BBQ sandwich is amazing. I had a hankering for some BBQ and this hit the spot. I was over the moon with the juicy, tender brisket, but blown away by the kolache bun. Talked to the chefs inside the truck and apparently they make these by hand. No details are spared by these guys — the sandwich was paired with spicy jalapeños, a sweet/​tangy sauce, and these amazing little pickles. It was extremely satisfying. Will be ordering this again once I have a chance to make my way through the menu.
Oh also, try it with the brown beer potato salad. They use locally sourced eggs so you get all your healthy omega 3s, and can justify washing it all down with an ice cold beer. It’s healthy! I can have a beer. I can have 3! I ate at this truck while it was outside the Rogness Brewery, so it’s kind of the perfect logic .
Anyway, the food is amazing, and not to mention the friendly and down to earth staff. I am a picky eater, and often have tons of questions before I order. They were more than happy to answer everything I threw their way. I love this. Especially in an increasingly snobby food truck culture. Little things like having amazing service and having amazing food win these guys 5 stars.
Bön appetite armadillo!