Celebrities love to customize cars, but all too often, their unchecked creativity at the auto-body shop can be a recipe for disaster, like that time Snoop Dogg commissioned a Pontiac for Kobe Bryant. Other times, however, their projects turn out, well, “delicious” is the word that leaps to mind. Fortunately, good taste prevailed when Land Rover and British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver cooked up a Land Rover Discovery that really puts the gas in gastronomy. (Ba-dum-pum!) When this posh pantry on wheels rolled in to downtown Los Angeles over the Thanksgiving weekend for its public debut at the Smorgasburg L.A. holiday market, we checked out the leather-lined lunch truck for ourselves.
While Oliver himself was not present, his friends and local chefs Donal Shekan and Caroline Artiss were there to serve up some turkey banh mi sandwiches?basically a Vietnamese-inspired twist on the post-Thanksgiving turkey sandwich. Chef Shekan gave an animated three-minute tour of the truck?s numerous added ingredients (as seen in our video, below). These include a slow cooker in the engine bay and a rotating spit roast sprouting from behind the Land Rover grille badge like a jouster?s lance. Inside, there’s a small refrigerator under the armrest, each door features a plate holder, a toaster has found its way into the center console, and a jelly tray flips down from behind the HVAC knobs. Cleverly concealed beneath the left side rear quarter-window panel is a spice rack, whi...