ROCKLAND — He may be serious about his food, but it doesn’t take long for Tom Pham to crack a joke. Within two seconds of meeting him, in fact.

“Are you Tom?” I ask.

“No, he doesn’t live here,” he says, behind the service window.

Pham just opened his first entrepreneurial venture, a food truck called Pho Sizzle, which he named as a comic variation on the slang phrase Fo’ Shizzle. (Pho is the Vietnamese word for a traditional bone-based soup and Sizzle is self-explanatory.)  His business got the final clearances to set up in Rockland last week and the food truck now sits tucked in a corner of Buoy Park in Rockland, just over a bit from the Black Pearl.

Last year, Pham left his corporate job in Tampa, Florida, and decided to do a 180 on his life by moving up to Monroe and farm for a living.

“I’d been to Maine to a couple of times and liked it. People are a little more laid back here,” he said. “I sort of always had the food truck idea in the back of my mind because I looked around and saw that there weren’t a lot of places that served authentic Asian food.”

The bright yellow food truck is actually a trailer and this past winter he bought it brand new from a man in Turner. He then worked with PDQ Prints Done Quickly to come up with the vinyl lettering, logo decal and even the red stripes, which he said represents the Vietnamese flag.

“Not today’s Communist regime,” he said, “The stripes represent the Communist Resistance flag.”

I spoke to him after his third day open as he was still trying to work out the kinks. Word had already spread via social media that he was open for business and he got slammed. With just himself cooking and an assistant, his friend Cole Fisher, he realizes with the summer population increasing, he’ll need to get another assistant sell out front while he works on getting out orders. “

This is my first real food venture on my own,” he said.

He works with a simple menu that changes from day to day and is listed on the white board outside his service window. Pham constructs each soup to order with variations of noodles and meats and allows the customer to further customize the hot dish with a variety of additions such as cilantro, Thai basil, Sriracha, bean sprouts and lemongrass. For the last three days, the pork belly rice bowl has been flying out of the truck, although his egg rolls and spring rolls have been popular as well.

His signature dish that day was a Bun Bo Hue, a spicy type of bone-based soup made from ham hocks that he flavors with tender beef chunks.

I got to try the Bun Bo Hue dish and the layers of fresh flavors were incredible. The tang of the nuac mom, the traditional Vietnamese fish sauce, complimented the rich meaty broth redolent of ginger, garlic, chilis and lime juice. Then there was the Angus beef chunks that he simmers all day that fall apart in your mouth along with the thick rice noodles. It was truly an entire meal—not just a soup.  “

“It’s very flavorful, but I have to tone down for the northerners,” Pham said.

Everything he makes he tries to source locally and he gets some of the produce from local farms.

This is the food he grew up on. 

“It’s funny. I grew up in Vietnam, which is a real patriarchal society. My dad couldn’t even cook Ramen noodles. He came home one day — we had just been living in America for two years — and said, ‘Boys come to the living room.’ We thought we were in trouble. So we get to the living room and he sits us down and says, ‘If you want to live here, you’ve got to learn how to cook.’ So, we learned how to cook. I’ve been cooking this way, very healthy, all my life since I was 10.”

“How long did it take you to put this whole food truck venture together?” I asked.

“Two days,” he joked.

Actually it took two months. He worked with Pepsi Co. to install some Pepsi coolers and outfitted the trailer with a 1980s Vulcan six-top burner, a microwave, freezer, a three-bay sink, a hand sink and a fire suppression system. Inside the compact trailer, every available space is used. Woks and various cooking instruments hang on the walls while stock pots take up the burners on the stove where they simmer much of the day. Outside the trailer, he’s got a heavy duty grill set up, which he uses for some of the meats.

Better get it while you can. When the leaves start flying in the fall, Pho Sizzle will be doing the bi-coastal thing. “I’ll do this for six months and then pack up the trailer and go down to Florida. Go to the beach, play volleyball and sell food down there,” he said, grinning.

Is that the life or what? Fo’ shizzle.

Pho Sizzle is a cash-only establishment. Besides that, the only downside is that there aren’t many seating areas in Buoy Park, but the granite rocks nearby serve perfectly well as benches. It is open for lunch and dinner, 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 4 to 7 p.m. and closed Mondays.

For more information, visit their Facebook page or email phosizzle@hotmail.com.

Read more about the area’s gourmet food trucks

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com.