Topic: Lord Rod, the Sweet Potato King

[Ken (OP)]

Meet Lord Rod, the Sweet Potato King of Yokohama, Japan

There’s only one thing to call a person who installs an oven to roast sweet potatoes on the back of their Mazda Miata: a legend.
The Outline | Joe Veix

 What’s the farthest you’ve ever traveled for a sweet potato? It’s okay, you can take some time to think. For me, it was a nearly 11-hour flight to Japan to find a guy named Eroko, who installed a giant wood-fired oven on the back of his tiny roadster convertible and drives nighttime streets of Yokohama, selling hot sweet potatoes.

While the yam car wasn’t the sole reason for my entire trip to Japan — I also went for the gyoza, the sightseeing, and more gyoza — it was definitely what yanked me over to Yokohama, which is about 17 miles south of Tokyo’s Shinagawa Station. For the New Yorkers in the crowd, that’s roughly the same distance from Union Square in Manhattan to JFK International Airport in Queens. If this sounds annoyingly far, note that it’s actually only — gasp — an 18-ish minute subway ride away.

Eroko’s oven-car is officially called the RodoPot, a portmanteau of roadster and potato. I first encountered Eroko, who has been going by the name Lord Rod, via a 2018 Jalopnik article about him. He was initially inspired to make a sweet potato car when, as a kid, he saw a bulky Toyota Century sedan cooking and selling noodles. So, many years later, he invested ¥500,000 ($4,700) to convert Mazda Miata NC into a mobile, 125-horsepower, yam-hucking machine. As for why he went with roasted sweet potatoes specifically, well, they’re a popular street food in Japan (they call the dish yaki-imo), and there is a rich tradition of vendors selling them out of stands and food trucks.

... follow the link above for the whole story, this is most deff something that I would do if my travels took me to Yokohama! 

[Skhilled]

I've read about those but have never tasted one.

[Ken (OP)]

Kay dose something a little like that, except that her oven is not wood-fired. For her's, she puts a nice coat of olive oil on them, wraps them in foil and then bakes them in her regular oven. This can also be done in a microwave, without the foil of course, but I much prefer the oven... to me they just seem to taste better from the oven.

She will also do sweet potato fries using the same basic concept, with the olive oil and foil in the oven. 

[Skhilled]

Lealer loves plain baked potatoes like that with just butter, salt and pepper. Me...I gotta have twice baked with cheese, maybe chili, bacon, sour cream, etc. LOL