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A sunshiney yellow food truck stands out among the nondescript white offices at 519 Marine View Ave. in Belmont. On the truck, the word “Meryenda” with the tagline “Home of the Filipino pandesalwich” is prominently displayed. 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 to his debut in food and beverage.
“I actually come from 20 years working in tech, and I was very burnt out from that particular field,” Yulo said. “I thought, ‘I need a year off.’ So I took that, and I said, ‘If I’m gonna come back, I have a choice: pursue a passion project of mine or dive back into corporate.’ And I chose this.”
Yulo opened Meryenda for regular service in late January serving what he calls “pandesalwiches” – Filipino-inspired sandwiches on traditional pandesal (soft, buttery and slightly sweet bread rolls). Meryenda’s menu, developed by Yulo and head chef Richard Moya, includes sandwich versions of traditional Filipino dishes like bistek (beef stew with soy sauce and citrus), Spam silog (Spam, egg and garlic fried rice) and chicken adobo (chicken in soy sauce vinegar stew). Vegetarians can also enjoy Meryenda’s “pandesalwiches” made with Impossible longganisa (a Filipino sausage). And for a sweet treat, Meryenda offers buko pandan bread pudding topped with coconut caramel and toasted coconut.
“I try to take American comfort food and apply a Filipino template on top of it,” Yulo said. “Our sandwiches are much bigger than sliders sizewise, but they’re not quite as physically large widthwise as a burger, so I also didn’t want to call it burgers.”
Yulo grew up in the Philippines, moving to California for college and settling in the Bay Area for his career in computer science. While he doesn’t have a culinary background, he’s been a longtime foodie.
“My grandfather used to take all of his 10 grandkids and their extended families out to dinner every single Saturday, and we’d always go to a new restaurant every single time,” he said. “I think that allowed us to get exposure to a lot of different foods. I think I did have that seed of being a foodie early on.”
About five years ago, he began thinking about how the flavors from back home are hard to find in the Bay Area.
“There’s 100% a dearth of Filipino food in Belmont, especially with the closure of SunRice,” Yulo said. “Our mission is really to try to expand everyone’s perspective on Filipino food, and ideally in a form that is comforting in nature.”
The term “meryenda” is a Spanish derivative term that generally means afternoon snack, something pandesal can be categorized as.
“We rallied around this idea of food that is comforting and breeds that social atmosphere that we think about when we think of eating meryenda at home,” Yulo said.
Find Meryenda at its commissary kitchen in Belmont most Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, as well as at the South San Francisco Farmers Market on Saturdays.
Operating a food truck comes with some unique challenges, Yulo said, including the lack of county-approved food truck commissaries along the Peninsula.
“Every food truck you see out there comes from probably one of three places: South San Francisco, Hayward and San Jose,” Yulo said. “In between all that triangle of space, nothing, just a complete dearth, except for the occasional commercial kitchen like this or a restaurant, that might be able to host one or two.”
Additionally, different cities have different laws in regards to food truck regulations. For example, operating a food truck on public property is legal in cities like Redwood City, Burlingame and Millbrae but illegal in cities like Belmont, San Mateo and San Carlos, said Yulo. Regulations also differ by counties. For example, Santa Clara County requires bug screens on food trucks whereas San Mateo County does not.
With Meryenda, Yulo hopes to bring attention to Filipino cuisine and eventually open his own brick and mortar.
“We want to see Filipino food rise to the ubiquity of Thai and Vietnamese,” he said. “I’d love a corner Meryenda where you can go down and really enjoy a cup of coffee and one of our sandwiches.”
Meryenda, 519 Marine View Ave. Unit F, Belmont; 650-200-0293, Instagram: @eatmeryenda. Open most Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
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