The Lime Truck offshoot, TLT, opening in Newport

For Daniel Shemtob, describing his food is simple — it’s like a lime.

“It’s fresh and it’s colorful and it’s eye-catching and exciting,” said the founder of the California fast-casual restaurant TLT. “I think that’s our food. It’s bold, it’s fresh and it’s got a lot of citrus.”

Plus, he added, “There’s lime in almost everything.”

Now Shemtob’s eclectic food-truck-turned-brick-and-mortar-restaurant menu — which features short rib quesadillas, seared ahi tuna tacos, beet salads, Brussels sprouts and a Bangkok chicken sandwich — is coming to the Bluffs Shopping Center in Newport Beach, with a new restaurant slated to open in August.

Shemtob, 27, grew up in Newport Beach and Irvine and initially pursued a career in real estate. But he quickly realized it wasn’t the field for him.

“I hated it,” he said. “It taught me an early lesson that you have to love what you do and that it’s not all about money. So I came up with the idea to open a restaurant.”

In 2010, he and a friend launched a food truck called The Lime Truck — a name that embodied their style.

“The concept was really simple,” Shemtob said. “Deliver really fresh food in fun ways and have bold flavors.”

Although neither had any formal culinary training, they knew what tasted good, like carnitas fries and a ground lamb sandwich with homemade tzatziki sauce. They learned everything on the fly, relying on the Internet and YouTube videos to teach them high-end cooking techniques.

“You can learn anything you want from picking up a book or going online,” said Shemtob. “How do we make béchamel, how do we do proper brining? We taught ourselves how to do everything.”

The Lime Truck, which drove all around Orange County — and sometimes into Los Angeles — took off, and in 2011, Shemtob was selected to compete on Season 2 of the Food Network reality television series “The Great Food Truck Race,” in which food trucks from across the country vie for a cash prize.

The Lime Truck won, beating out seven other teams.

Although the competition was “grueling” — Shemtob was on the show while also running the business back in Orange County — it opened doors and led to The Lime Truck’s success.

“When I got home, I wanted to have Bobby Flay call and say, ‘I have a TV show for you,’” he said of the celebrity chef. “That didn’t happen, but it got our foot in the door. We set up a lot of meetings and got a lot of national and international press, which is hard to do when you’re breaking into the industry.”

In 2012, The Lime Truck owners opened their first brick-and-mortar, fast-casual restaurant under the name TLT in Los Angeles, and in late 2014, they opened another in Orange County, in the Irvine Spectrum Center.

TLT’s menu has evolved since its food truck origins — Shemtob said it’s important to constantly revamp the food to avoid becoming stagnant — with only a couple surviving dishes, like the carnitas fries and Yum Yum Lamb Sliders.

Now Shemtob’s favorite dishes include blue crab grilled cheese, made of blue crab, a cheese blend, scallions, jalapenos, sambal and grilled sourdough; chicken taco salad, made of a tostada shell with iceberg lettuce, braised poblano chicken with sweet corn, cilantro, pico de gallo, crispy jalapenos, homemade guacamole, ranch dressing and lime; and a green rice bowl made of chimichurri rice, pickled vegetables, miso radish, ruikake, sesame, sambal, cilantro and a choice of protein.

Most dishes cost around $10, with tacos around $4.

While many menu items have changed, Shemtob’s style and commitment to quality haven’t.

“The cooking techniques we’re doing are those of 5-star restaurants,” he said. “We do French techniques.... We use vinegars and acids that are complex. I don’t think too many fast-casual restaurants are doing that. We make everything from scratch.

“I think it’s special, being able to order something that’s $9 and every part is meticulously thought out.”

For Shemtob, The Lime Truck and TLT have played a role not just in delivering good food to Orange County, but also in transforming the local culinary scene.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when he was growing up, most restaurants were chains. “When you wanted a good meal, there weren’t many options,” he said. “There wasn’t a casual dining scene, and there weren’t that many chef-driven restaurants.”

But now, fast-casual restaurants and chef-driven and independently owned eateries are everywhere.

Shemtob sees The Lime Truck’s footprint in many of these new outlets.

“Now you can go into another restaurant in the mall and see a similar menu,” he said. “We created all that. Not too many people were doing fries with meat on them. People weren’t doing 12-hour braised beef short ribs and quesadillas, but we were. We were ahead of the trend, and now we’re in it, but we’re doing it better than anyone.”

As Shemtob prepares for the opening of new TLT locations in Newport Beach and Pasadena — which will feature the same menu as the current locations — he says one of his favorite parts of the job remains getting people to try new things.

“When I started this brand, a lot of people hadn’t tried pork belly, or this or that,” he said. “We opened their horizons and got them excited about the product. It’s been a fun process.

“We create addicts. People will come in once. Then we’ll see them come in every day.”

--

Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil, caitlin.kandil@latimes.com