One of the supreme tenets of the food industry has always been location, location, location. Langara College, hidden away in a residential area bordered by a golf course, has never been a focus of cheap eats, even though within its walls hides an untapped market of hungry and extremely budget-conscious eaters. Main Street's East Indian market is a few minutes walk, but the selection is limited. Oakridge Centre mall is a train stop away, but if you're between classes, that may not be an option. So in comes Fasttrac Fusion trying to fill a need.
Fasttrac specializes in teriyaki rice bowls, and yakitori (stir-fried) noodle bowls, as well as meat skewers and other weekly specials. The menu doesn't try to change the ages-old food-court formula, offering beef, chicken and veggie toppings for $4.99 each.
Each bowl comes with sliced carrots, steamed broccoli, an abundant blanket of teriyaki sauce, and finished with a sprinkle of furikake (a Japanese topping of bonito/dried fish flakes, sesame seeds, and nori/dried seaweed). As is my custom, I ordered the chicken. Why chicken? Because how a cook prepares chicken is more individualistic than anything else. Any monkey can cook beef and steam vegetables - chicken offers an array of variations, for better or for worse. This time, the chicken was a skin-on thigh pan-fried until crispy, then sliced thin.
It's a decent size portion for the price, enough to fill me up for lunch, while leaving about 1/3 of the rice. The chicken was moist, albeit fatty (it's thigh meat after all). Any flavour from the protein, or the furikake was masked completely by the syrupy teriyaki sauce. Thankfully, it wasn't sacharrin sweet, and had a little depth to it - but nothing beyond mediocre. The veg were crunchy, which is always appreciated.
They were offering beef and lamb skewers as a special and charging $2 for each, or $5 for 3 - night market pricing. I went for a lamb skewer coz I love my lamb. There's a decent amount of meat on the stick, but nowhere near Chinese Skewer King's portions. Meat was very flavourful - loads of that lovely gamey lamb-iness in every bite. Nothing was added on that I could tell, it was just pure unadultered meat.
Fasttrac Fusion is what it is. Simple filling nosh at a reasonable price. I wouldn't advise going out of your way to try them, but if you're a Langara student or live in the area - it's certainly a worthwhile option. Look for the shiny grey Fasttrac cart at the entrance of the Langara Canada Line subway stop, at the northeast corner of West 49th at Cambie.
Done.
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