Roli Roti Gourmet Rotisserie: Since Before Food Trucks Were Cool

Chef Thomas Odermatt calls himself "more of a caterer nowadays," but this son of a Swiss 'Metzgermeister' (master butcher) who still pulls his Roli Roti Gourmet Rotisserie truck into farmers' markets, would deserve to rank among America's best food trucks just for his prescience alone. Odermatt went into the food truck business 10 years ago, a good five or six years before the trend took off, a time before Twitter, when as Inside Scoop SF reported, getting a break publicity wise was tough, and the truck's big media break came when news of the truck being stolen made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle ("It's the first truck with a giant chicken ever stolen in the city, a police dispatcher said.").

After earning his master's in organic farming in Zürich and attending UC Berkeley, Odermatt became more interested in the "wood fired ovens of Chez Panisse and the lively farmers' markets," and took the popular rotisserie dinners he'd been making for friends on the road in a food truck. If you're lucky enough to find Roli Roti at a market, you're probably just going to want to order each of the three signature items: the RoliRoti Combo (a quarter chicken and a side of rosemary roasted potatoes), the porchetta sandwich, and the roasted pork knuckle.

Arthur Bovino is The Daily Meal's executive editor. Follow Arthur on Twitter.