This new Modesto food trailer offers up flavors from the Midwestern to Mediterranean
Sometimes, feeding people just gets in your blood.
For Modesto resident Sarkis Benjamin, despite running a successful auto body shop in town since 2006, he kept wanting to feed people. So in 2014, he opened his first restaurant, Sark’s City Grill on Carpenter Road, serving the food he knew best — Mediterranean fare from his Assyrian roots and Midwestern favorites from his years living in Chicago. But he struggled to keep his first restaurant going and it closed in a little under a year.
Still, the desire to feed people wouldn’t go away. And he said he kept “itching” to do it again.
So last month he launched a food truck version of his restaurant in the parking lot of his business, Performance Collision Center, just off North Ninth Street. He brought back much of his old menu, now mostly in convenient sandwich form, and even the old name. But the flavors and varieties remain unique at Sark’s City Grill, which is now “On Wheels” as its logo displays.
His menu is small, but distinctive. Along with popular standards like burgers and fries, you’ll find gyro and falafel sandwiches, Philly cheesesteaks and Sark’s signature Chicago dogs (ranging in price from $6 to $9 each). For those unfamiliar with the Windy City favorite, it’s a loaded hot dog that features a poppyseed bun, mustard, celery salt, pickles, tomatoes, onions, “sport” peppers and a neon green sweet relish.
Benjamin has his poppyseed hot dog buns custom made for him at Genova Bakery in Stockton. He imports the neon green relish from Chicago. For fellow transplanted Midwesterners like me, it’s hands down, the most authentic tasting Chicago dog I’ve had in Modesto.
“I just love food, Assyrians love food and we love flavors,” he said.
Benjamin said he decided to open a food trailer, instead of another brick-and-mortar restaurant, to make things easier on himself. And he already had the perfect location, his body shop parking lot. He customized the 12-foot trailer for his needs, adding a vertical broiler so he could serve freshly carved gyro meat, and other features.
He sources almost all of his ingredients locally, save for the green relish and special order gyro meat. And while the menu isn’t extensive, the combination of choices, from a cheeseburger to falafel, is varied enough to keep bringing people back for more. In fact, one customer who stopped by for a gyro said it was his third time that week at the food truck.
Benjamin runs the trailer with a staff of two, and some help from his office staff just steps away. In the future, he hopes to use the trailer for caterings and other events on the weekends when his shop is closed.
But for now, he’s just happy to be back feeding people again, and filling their bellies with the flavors he loves.
Sark’s City Grill, at 1400 N Ninth St., suite 50, is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday. For more information call 209-672-0904 or visit www.facebook.com/Sarks-City-Grill-150617431799983.
This story was originally published January 10, 2021 at 4:30 AM.
