At Home on the Beach This Weekend

The Cambriello family of Beachmont has spent several lifetimes squashing fires around Revere, but the newest generation in the family has a knack for squashing hunger with burgers sold from the nation’s hottest new culinary trend – the gourmet food truck.

This Saturday, July 20th, Rich Cambriello will fire up his ‘Bone Daddy’s Burgers’ food truck (complete with burger delicacies like ‘Die Muenster Die’) and drive approximately two blocks to sell his storied burgers on Revere Beach at the National Sandsculpting Festival.

For a guy who makes his living selling burgers in Boston’s booming food truck scene, staying home in Revere is a welcome treat.

“You can literally see my house on Crest Avenue from the Beach,” said Cambriello, 41. “I grew up on Revere Beach. My mom would take  us there all the time. My wife takes our kids down there. It’s great to be on the Beach. I’ve had a million and a half people ask me if I would ever do something in Revere. I never thought I’d come across an opportunity in Revere, but this is a great one. It’s going to be packed with trucks. We’re pretty tight in the food truck community and those coming to Revere Beach are pretty geeked to be at the Beach on a Saturday.”

The food trucks are a new addition to the Festival this year, with Partnership Director Amanda Gourgue saying there will be more trucks than at an actual Food Truck Festival.

Organizers said they wanted to catch on to the food truck trend, and felt that the Beach setting would be a perfect fit.

Dozens of trucks are expected, and in addition to Cambriello, Revere’s own James DiSabatino will bring his famous ‘Roxy’s Gourmet Grilled Cheese’ to the Beach as well.

While DiSabatino has been at it for several years (and we hear he is on the verge of opening a brick and mortar store in the near future), Cambriello just kicked off his venture about four months ago.

“The owner of the truck is my good friend David Stein, but I am the chef and operations manager,” he said. “It’s my truck to run the way I see fit. I make the menu items and take care of every single detail and it all comes down to me.”

What comes down to him is just what to serve, and so far his ideas have caught on very well.

For example, ‘Die Muenster Die’ is an Angus beef burger with bacon aioli, a soft fried egg, a specialized pickle and muenster cheese.

“The egg is a weird choice, but it seems to be the hot new thing for burgers,” said Cambriello. “I thought about it and realized it makes sense. You have the traditional bacon and eggs, so why not a burger too? We have ‘add an egg for $1’ on our menu now and we routinely sell out of eggs.”

Another delicacy is the hot dog on his menu – named for his son Jack. That creation is a quality hot dog wrapped in bacon and deep-fried. It’s topped with cheese and caramelized roasted garlic and jalapeno relish.

For this Saturday’s festival, he said he’s thinking about something special, and customers will have to stop by to see what that might be.

“I’m always trying to push myself to do something new and creative – but good,” he said. “For those of us operating food trucks it’s fun because you’re not cooking for a big corporation telling you what to do. We can change things whenever we want. We change our fries every week and our beverages. The other day we had lavender lemonade and the next day we had pomegranate iced tea.”

Cambriello, actually, comes from a long line of firefighters, not chefs.

His father, Bruce, is a retired Revere firefighter, and his late grandfather, Nick, was also a Revere firefighter. His uncle also was a jake in Revere.

Cambriello never really considered becoming a chef or a food truck operator. He slowly got into the business, cutting his teeth as a short-order cook for the Hard Rock Café and Hooters. Eventually, he learned the finer side of the culinary arts from his mentor, Cory Magras, at the Somerville Holiday Inn.

While working for Sodexho at the Suffolk University Law School, he met Stein, and that was the launching point for the food truck foray.

For the most part, the food truck scene in Boston is highly regulated, with the City of Boston picking the locations that trucks can park. Operators choose their spot through a regular lottery drawing, and the spots change frequently.

Each truck, also, is required to have a Central Commercial Kitchen facility – so that the food isn’t prepared at home and put on the truck.

However, some things – such as salsa and some of the fresh herbs – do come from Cambriello’s Revere home.

“Instead of saying it’s ‘house made,’ we say it’s ‘truck made,’” Cambriello joked. Cambriello is the son of Bruce Cambriello and Margie Chiarella of Beachmont. He is married to Dianne Cambriello and has one daughter, Mia, and one son, Jack.