Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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Dining A La Cart [Tun-Du-Ree]

Posted Aug 22, 2008 by Jeff Houck

Updated Aug 22, 2008 at 06:27 PM

Details magazine has a list of what it says are the best food carts in America. They include:

Denver
Biker Jim’s Gourmet Dogs
The road from repo man to sausage-slinger is not exactly well-traveled, but Jim Pittenger made it a smooth one. He started selling locally made game sausages out of a cart in downtown Denver three years ago. He’ll happily add sauerkraut, spicy mustard, or a dill-pickle slice to, for instance, a dog made with elk hunted in a Colorado reserve, but he prefers to use his signature condiment: cream cheese piped from a caulking gun. Whatever it’s dressed up with, the meat is charred on a hot grill, because, as Pittenger puts it on his website, “if you tried to serve me a boiled Reindeer or Buffalo brat, I would have to hit you.”

Nice. Sounds like my kind of place.

But we have some pretty great carts of our own in the Tampa Bay area.

My newest favorite: Tun-Du-Ree, Magic of the Indian Grill at South MacDill Avenue and Interbay Boulevard.

I ate there on Thursday with a few newsroom friends and enjoyed my meal a lot.

I tried the Tun-Du-Ree Chicken Wrap (left) and the Garlic Naan Hot Dog (right). Both were really fresh and delicious. I washed it down with a cold, smoothie-like Mango lassi. Great stuff.

TBOExtra.com gave it high marks:

Fresh, flavorful and affordable Indian food served from a trailer. A variety of curries, tandoori, samosas and traditional Indian breads highlight the menu, and the delicious Punjabi lassi is soothing after all those spicy dishes. Seating is limited to a few outdoor tables with umbrellas, but everything is packaged to take home.

In February, IndiaOn.com, an online community for Indian immigrants in the United States, has named Tun-Du-Ree owner Sravana Bhava its Entrepreneur of the Month. Bhava, who goes by “Pat,” his callsign as a fighter pilot in the Indian navy. He is now retired.

Since opening in March 2007, Bhava has developed a loyal clientele, including many military customers from nearby MacDill Air Force Base. When a code enforcement officer began harassing Bhava in early 2007, hundreds of customers wrote to city hall in protest. The officer was later assigned to an area that does not include Tun-Du-Ree.

“We have such faithful regulars who are downright obsessive about the food, and most of them had never heard such thing as Indian food before,” Bhava told the Web site.

The lunch spot also has one of the nicest signs I have ever seen: