Bay Area Fast Casual Breakout Curry Up Now Featured in ‘Ugly Delicious’ Season 2

Samosa-stuff burritos, now broadcasted to a national audience

One of the real OGs of the Bay Area’s gourmet food truck scene, which emerged in the late aughts, Curry Up Now has been nothing short of a success story since its 2009 debut as a single, scrappy truck serving both traditional Indian street foods and wild (especially for that time) mash-ups — tikka masala burritos, deconstructed samosas, Indian-inflected poutine, and such. The company now has trucks and fast-casual restaurants all over the country — notably in Atlanta, New Jersey, and SoCal, in addition to across the Bay Area. And, as of today, it has a splashy television feature as well: It’s featured in the second episode of Season 2 of Ugly Delicious, the David Chang-hosted Netflix food series, which drops today, March 6.

The whole episode focuses on Indian food, and as a follow-up to a discussion of trendy, next-generation Indian fast-casual joints that serve a “hodgepodge” of different things, a couple of the show’s talking heads (including Eater’s own Sonia Chopra) drop in on a Curry Up Now restaurant in San Jose, where they chow down on a samosa-stuffed burrito and sev puri topped with guacamole.

It’s all part of a broader conversation on who gets to remix Indian food, and what it means when restaurants like Curry Up Now introduce Indian flavors to a broader, non-Indian audience.

Disclosure: David Chang is producing shows for Hulu in partnership with Vox Media Studios, part of Eater’s parent company, Vox Media. No Eater staff member is involved in the production of those shows, and this does not impact coverage on Eater.

And in other news...

• SF Chronicle critic Soleil Ho drops a rave review for Belotti, the Rockridge fresh pasta superstar and long-tenured member of the East Bay Essential 38. “‘Perfect’ is a dangerous word in criticism,” Ho writes, “but, I assure you, that’s what this pasta is, within the limited scope of its ambition.” [SFC]
• As previously noted, Tad’s Steakhouse, the longstanding Union Square tourist magnet, has risen from the ashes and, as of this Saturday, will now officially be open for business at its new 38 Ellis Street location. [Hoodline]
• A second location of Noodles Fresh, purveyor of hard-to-find regional noodle dishes such as Jiangxi-style stir-fried rice noodles, is now open in Berkeley — with a “secret menu” to boot. [Daily Cal]
• Three months after reopening in its new location in the Mission, Prubechu, San Francisco’s only Guamanian restaurant, is kicking off a monthly brunch series this Sunday, March 8. They’ll be doing brunch, 11 a.m.–2 p.m., every second Sunday of the month, and the lineup of dishes will include things like coconut milk toast, tinaktak poutine, corn beef fried red rice, and Guam-style pot roast with eggs.