Chef Jaymes Khademi and manager Jayson Khademi stand out from the crowd of food trucks with Sangak, a Persian sourdough flatbread, in hand. The brothers recently hit the streets with Saffron JAK, pairing their unconventional ingredients with a menu that changes with their moods.
“We try to think about what we’re offering.” Jayson said. Their new food truck serves unique and locally fueled specials to the Tempe and Phoenix area, including the popular Loaded Baked Potato pizza, complete with pork belly bacon, red onion, cheddar and yogurt sour cream.
"It's not as heavy as you would think!" Jayson said.
Another creation called the Chicken and Waffle arrives fresh out of the oven complete with house fried chicken, maple bacon and country gravy.
As for the ingredients, the bright yellow trailer totes around local pork belly bacon from The Meat Shop, Saffron JAK house turkey sausage, local cheese and uncured pepperoni from California-based company Zoe's Meats.
“Anytime we can, we’ll get them local. We searched six months for pepperoni. Even the bread. But our ultimate goal is to make the bread local as well.” Jayson said.
Sangak bread was the traditional bread of the Persian army, cooked on stones.
"In the states, you’re not allowed to, because of health codes, cook on actual rocks.” Jayson said.
That makes Jayson and Jaymes the proud owners of the only pizza stone on wheels.
“These ovens they have, they make in Iran and ship them over here. There’s less than 20 in the country.” Jayson said.
“It’s a one of a kind in the sense that there’s no other trucks that have this type of oven," Jayson said. "It’s a three-deck stone bottom oven. So we can do about 12 pizzas at a time, pretty much 12 pizzas every 10 minutes or so.”
While Jayson hails from the entertainment industry, Jaymes has experience as a chef in vegan restaurants in Scottsdale. Jayson said the truck has had success as the newest member of the Phoenix Street Food Coalition even in Arizona's summer season.
Jayson Khademi, head chef assembles pizzas inside Saffron JAK, the newest food truck in downtown Phoenix. (photo by Diana Lustig)“We’ve been very well received." Jayson said. "We have been getting booked up in October, November, December for catering gigs already. In the past week, since we’ve joined the Food Truck Coalition, I’ve been hit up at least once or twice a day.”
The brothers’ business plan originally started with a wholesale bakery before it turned into a restaurant. When the economy worked against their favor, they took what money they had to start a food truck. The search for their trailer, ingredients and pizza stone took them almost two years.
"It took us about a year to find a place that could build what we wanted," Jayson said. “The air conditioning doesn’t do much in the summer, but that’s to be expected, especially when we’re cranking that oven at 600 degrees.”
But at the end of the day, Jayson and Jaymes are just glad to be up and on the road.
"If I can sit outside a venue listening to awesome music and slanging awesome pizzas, that would be great." Jayson said.
You can find the Saffron JAK team slanging pizzas for breakfast and lunch near Firestone on 3rd Avenue and Osborne Road and at Kobalt for dinner. Follow them on Facebook or visit the Phoenix Street Food Coalition Website for more information.
Contact the reporter at aovnicek@asu.edu or follow on Twitter @aovnicek
