Authentic Asian cuisine served at Fifth Flavor, Kent's newest food truck | Local Flavor on Wheels
Local Flavor on Wheels: This summer, we’re trying area food trucks for our Local Flavor series instead of sit-down establishments. We hope you’ll come along for the ride!
Tucked away near downtown Kent, on an easy to miss street named Temple Avenue (just beyond North Water Brewing), is a small dark teal restaurant on wheels serving dishes straight out of Thailand.
Its name is Fifth Flavor. Don’t worry, we will get to the other four later in this story.
Owner Premmarin "Prem" Milindasuta is a one-woman show, fulfilling nearly every role in a normal brick-and-mortar eatery — cashier, cook, food prepper, social media manager, etc. — since the mobile kitchen opened Feb. 22.
And boy oh boy, the dishes coming out of it are really something.
On the menu at Fifth Flavor
Fifth Flavor’s menu has familiar Asian dishes like green curry, gyoza and dumplings, alongside more adventurous options, like beef street kaprao — a spicy stir-fried beef with basil that’s served over rice.
Then there are Milindasuta’s weekly specials, such as crispy pork belly, toffee cake and pork jowl with garlic rice and nam jim jeaw, a popular Thai dipping sauce made with fish sauce, tamarind, sugar, dried chilies, toasted rice powder and herbs.
She has even offered tom yum shrimp fried rice. Traditionally, tom yum is a soup, but Milindasuta created a fried rice version that is creamy and full of aroma.
When my friend Sarah and I visited, I ordered the pan-fried gyoza ($8) and beef street kaprao ($13) while Sarah decided to have vegetable dumplings ($9) and tom kha gai, a Thai coconut soup ($5). The total for our dinner was $42.
Had we not eaten a few hours earlier, Sarah would have also gotten the eggplant unagi don ($11), which she has had there before and thoroughly enjoyed.
The sour soy sauce served with the gyoza adds a kick of acidity to the pillowy morsels. Plus the tender, thin slips of beef packed lots of flavor in my beef street kaprao.
Sarah’s vegetable dumplings were filled with cabbage, carrots, and shiitake mushrooms. They are served on a bed of tahini sauce and topped with drizzles of chili oil. The creamy and spicy qualities of the tahini and chili oil combined with the fillings made the dish quite flavorful, she said.
Sarah, who had never eaten Thai basil before, thought the tom kha gai was interesting. I still think her one love is that eggplant unagi don, which comes as a surprise since Sarah doesn’t often prefer vegetarian dishes.
As the summer moves along, Milindasuta plans to add menu items like Thai tea, chicken wings (with Asian sauces like gochujang and garlic ginger) and zaru soba – a refreshing dish comprised of buckwheat noodles and a chilled broth that is popular on hot summer days in Japan.
Authentic Asian food in Kent
Milindasuta grew up in Thailand and came to the United States to study arts administration at the University of Akron in 2013. At the time, she lived in Akron’s eccentric Highland Square neighborhood.
After graduating in 2017, she returned to Thailand and remained there for six years, during which she taught at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Milindasuta made the journey back to Ohio in 2023 and settled in Kent.
She loves eating but could not find the flavors she missed from home in the little college town. The owner opened Fifth Flavor to not only share the taste of Thailand with people, but also expose them to authentic Asian dishes that are probably foreign to them.
“I start from something that they are used to like gyoza, panang curry [or] green curry and then I like to have something like chicken rice ginger that I had as a special,” Milindasuta said. “I try [to] move on from that to things they are not familiar with. So, I hope they could try more and more of the food that we don't really have around here.”
So far, she has taken her flavors down the road to North Water Brewing Co., but one day Milindasuta hopes to operate out of a brick-and-mortar space so customers can sit down and consume her food while it is hot and fresh.
The five flavors of deliciousness
When deciding on a name for her business, Milindasuta knew she did not want it to include the word Thai because she plans to serve Japanese, Chinese, Korean and other Asian foods well beyond Thailand’s borders.
So, she thought back to the method by which she, her mother and grandmother cook. Instead of putting ingredients together with recipes as guardrails, they simply taste.
Many Thai recipes have similar ingredients, such as lime juice, palm sugar or fish sauce, but it’s the balance of these ingredients that makes the dish taste unique. Every flavor profile in it comes from memories and instinct.
Honestly, the sign on Milindasuta’s little teal kitchen explains it best, “If you combine the four common flavors of salt, sweet, sour and bitter in just the right way, it produces the fifth flavor of deliciousness.”
Creativity aside, umami is generally recognized as the fifth taste element that builds our perception of flavor. Luckily, the cuisine coming out of Fifth Flavor fits both definitions, possessing that savory umami flavor and definitely qualifying as delicious.
Got a story recommendation? Contact Beacon Journal reporter Tawney Beans at [email protected] and on Twitter @TawneyBeans. And follow her adventures on TikTok @akronbeaconjournal.
Details
Place: Fifth Flavor
Address: 632 Temple Ave., Kent (usually)
Phone: (234) 282-1792
Hours: 4 to 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday
Website: fifthflavorkent.com
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Fifth Flavor is a hidden Asian food truck near downtown Kent, OH
