If there’s anything that makes me grateful for living in Memphis, it’s finding a new food truck with about as much hustle and flow as the movie. 

Lamees Muhamad originally debuted the Chakka Aur Chaat food truck in July on Knight Arnold Road near the corner of Ridgeway Road. Muhamad has since moved northwest to a gas station parking lot on Poplar Avenue. But, for the last three months, he’s been grinding hard-to-serve Memphis some of the only Indo-Pakistani cuisine either of us are aware of in the city.

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A Houston native and son of an Indian and Pakistani mother and father, Muhamad came to Memphis looking for a place for his own culinary niche. The choice was simple: too much competition in Houston, virtually none in Memphis. 

Hence the name, Chakka Aur specializes in chaat: savory Desi snacks. The food then, as you might imagine, is pretty lighthearted and casual. But that doesn’t mean flippant. And it definitely doesn’t mean unfocused.

There are five sections of the menu at Chakka Aur: chaat, rolls and burgers, fries, snacks and dessert. Even though there are a lot of Indo-Pakistani items on the menu, there is just as much food for the less-adventurous (i.e., tandoori wings to mango habanero, bun kebab to cheeseburger), but I’m less interested in that. I wanted to know what made Muhamad tick. I got the bhel puri, the tandoori wings and the seekh kebab roll.

Bhel puri is a street snack with roots in the coast of Mumbai. Crunchy puffed rice crisps, chickpeas and sev are lathered in imli chutney — made tangy by tamarind and sweet by jaggery — and green chutney blitzed with cilantro, mint and green chilis. It’s garnished with fresh red onions, tomatoes and fat leaves of cilantro. If a texture could be described as refreshing, a good example would be this dish. The crunch is aggressive, but it’s so light and airy that you bite right through it like Rice Krispies.

The chutney binds everything together, so it’s possible to pick up with a spoon, but it also coats everything in flavor that makes your mouth water and pucker at the same time. It’s crisp, light and oddly addicting — and $6.99.

The tandoori wings are just chicken wings tossed in tandoori sauce, but there’s complexity in their simplicity. There’s something wonderfully surprising at work when biting into a chicken wing absolutely drenched in South Asian spices. These have got a kick to them but nothing your run-of-the-mill capsaicin enjoyer can’t bridle. You can order six pieces for $9.99 or 10 for $13.99.

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My favorite was the seekh kebab roll. Spiced, ground and grilled beef gets dolled up with fried and fresh onions, tomatoes and more cilantro after being wrapped up in a hot-buttered paratha. It’s served alongside the two aforementioned chutneys, plus a sweet chili sauce. I dumped them all in that paratha together because I couldn’t get enough. This wrap alone had me wondering whether I had made any prior dinner plans the next day. And it was $7.

Don’t expect to find any seating in the parking lot of this gas station besides your car. I ate a good bit of the seekh kebab off the hood of my Subaru out in the cold, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Go show Chakka some love, and let me know how the rest of the menu eats.

Chakka Aur Chaat Food Truck, located in the parking lot of the Shell gas station at 5211 Poplar Ave., is open every day from noon to 10 p.m. Follow their Instagram page, @chakkaaurchaat, for more information.