Look At This Fucking Dish.

Though She Be But Little, The Easy Slider Truck’s Sweet & Lowdown Is Fierce.

Welcome to Look At This Fucking Dish, our recurring feature highlighting the craziest, most decadent dishes found in and around Dallas. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like.

The Sweet & Lowdown (two for $7, three for $10).
Easy Slider Food Truck.
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I know: When you think of Look At This Fucking Dish your mind jumps to the most obscene or unexpected things that can be slapped on a plate and served for your consumption.

It’s just what our primal selves crave — the grotesquely unique.

Thing is, the Sweet & Lowdown offered up by the Easy Slider Food Truck isn’t any those things. It isn’t massive. It isn’t topped sky-high with odd and seemingly frivolous ingredients. There isn’t some exotic meat or special cooking method. In fact, the Sweet & Lowdown may be one of the simpler sliders served from the grill run by Caroline Perini and Miley Holmes.

Still, even without these things, you really need to look at this fucking dish.

Appearing on a an ever-changing menu that boasts burgers topped with everything from blue cheese to peanut butter, the Sweet & Lowdown sports just three added ingredients: goat cheese, bacon and strawberry jam. That last one is the money-maker.

Because, though the Sweet & Lowdown may not stand out visually in the lineup of sliders served by Easy Slider, its taste has taken it to unexpected heights.

It was developed by Perini before the team opened the truck in late 2011. Served as one of the “Original Five” sliders, both Perini and Holmes expected its stay to be short-lived.
But, unexpectedly, the strawberry-tinged slider became a massive hit, earning itself a permanent stay on the menu — as well as becoming the most popular thing slapped between two buns that came out of the truck.

It’s more than earned its status. Though it’s simple, the taste this slider provides is massive. The patty is Angus beef (because if it ain’t Angus, who gives a fuck?), the goat cheese is heated in a tin on the grill to make it spreadable (ever tried spreading refrigerated goat cheese on bread?) and the jam is spread over that. The whole thing is then garnished with some bacon. Because it’s bacon.

Stop asking questions.

The jam selection was an irking process for the duo. They found that normal jams contained too much sugary sweetness and demolished the hearty taste of the goat cheese and burger meat. Instead, they use homemade or all-natural, non-sugarfied strawberry jam. The resulting taste is more subdued — and it compliments the goat cheese in the most amazing way.

Biting into one of these beefy dwarfs surprises your mouth with a cacophony of flavors you never knew that you wanted but that you secretly craved all along. You don’t even notice the second bite. Or the third. Then, all of a sudden, you’ve downed four sliders, you’re starting to sweat a bit and you’re ordering more.

The jam and goat cheese mixes over the warm, lightly salted angus beef, and the bacon adds a hint of crunch. Think of it as a reverse bacon cupcake: Instead of sweet intermixed with a touch of gamy meatiness, the meat is lightly complimented by a subdued sweetness. And it works, forcing your taste buds to jump from the expected taste of 100 percent Angus beef to surprising taste of the jam and goat cheese mixture.

So of course we wanted to learn more. So here’s some more information on this sweet little thing — straight from Perini and Holmes themselves.

You really didn’t realize you had something special as soon as you came up with the Sweet & Lowdown?
Perini: I definitely thought that it wasn’t going to last. We didn’t know how people were going to react to the jam and goat cheese on beef with bacon.
Holmes: People’s reaction have been — and continue to be — a total surprise. It started out as a wild card and quickly became the winner. The Sweet & Lowdown is our signature slider, I would definitely say.

What was your reaction when you first made it and tasted it during the testing phase?
Holmes: I can remember that we were at our old jobs when Caroline called me from her office and said, “I have a really good idea for the slider menu, tell me what you think,” and I bought it immediately.
Perini: It got to the point where we would describe it to people before they even tried it, just so we could see their reaction. And they were on board, I think. And then we would hold these test kitchens before we opened the truck where we would make all of our sliders come to life — all these ideas we had. And that always ended up being one of the number one picks for everybody. Now, granted, it was a late-night test kitchen. But it’s been on the menu ever since.

Are you still experimenting with new sliders?
Perini: Absolutely. Every slider, before it makes it onto the truck, goes through test kitchens. And we are always experimenting with ingredients on the truck. We offer a slider of the month where, every month, we introduce a new slider flavor. We have a vegetarian option. During the summer, we offer ahi tuna. Anything can be a slider. And it’s four or five bites. You’re done and you move on to the next flavor.

You don’t feel so bad after eating it, like you would with a full-sized burger.
Holmes: No! You don’t! You can afford to be a little… I don’t want to say risky. You can afford to think outside the box. It’s just a little burger. Move on to the next one.

And what are each of your favorite sliders?
Holmes: Nutty Pig, all day long. It’s our beef burger with bacon, lettuce, tomato, onion and peanut butter. But my secret is I add mayonnaise and sriracha. It’s like a Thai peanut flavor. I eat that all too often.
Perini: My favorite, currently, as of today, and it will totally change tomorrow: I’m real into the French Revolution right now, which is our beef patty with melted Gruyere cheese, grilled onions and prosciutto with Dijon mustard.

Where do you guys get the most business from?
Perini: We definitely get great business at the Truck Yard off Greenville. That is an amazing turnout every time we go there.
Holmes: We also have a really nice turnout at Sigel’s off Greenville and Lover’s Lane. We have a lot of regulars that come out there. We’ve been going there practically since day one. Every Wednesday night.

What’s your favorite location — for the view?
Holmes: Double Wide at 2:01 a.m. That’s always a good place.
Perini: It was our very first stop ever. So it’s kind of like going home, I guess.