Time gets on the bandwagon with a piece about LA County’s plan to kick taco trucks out. Apparently the purpose of government is to take sides in what County Supervisor Gloria Molina, the leader of the crackdown, admits is a “turf war.”

“There are so many other problems in this city. Gangs. Robberies. To focus on people trying to make a living selling tacos? It makes no sense,” says Olegario Hernandez, while gassing up his taco truck on East L.A.’s Whittier Blvd. Taco truck drivers say it takes time to set up and prepare the food, and that moving constantly would make doing business impossible.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Jonathan Gold is my hero.

LA Weekly:

The best thing I had to eat last week was a massive carnitas huarache, from the Gorditas Lupita’s truck on Eagle Rock Boulevard near Avenue 34. I ate it while leaning against a warehouse wall in Glassell Park, washed it down with a bottle of Mexican Coke and perfumed with the exhaust of a thousand diesel trucks. The second-best thing may have been a Puebla-style cemita overstuffed with fried beef milanesa, ripe avocado and shreds of the Pueblan string cheese called quesillo — that one I ate sitting on a plastic folding chair right on Indiana Street, where it runs into César Chávez at Five Points in East L.A.

The third, who knows? A bean-smeared clayuda devoured while sitting curbside at the La Oaxaqueña truck on Lincoln at Rose in Venice? A tostada of fiercely hot aguachile, chopped marinated shrimp, eaten on a milk crate perched next to a Whittier Boulevard medical clinic? A spicy tongue taco eaten at El Pique, in the parking lot of a Highland Park car wash on York at Avenue 53? The carne asada taco at the El Chato truck on Olympic near La Brea, the tooth-staining red sauce at El Taquito Mexicana in Pasadena, the al pastor at El Taurino on Hoover at 11th near Macarthur Park? They all came from trucks; they all made me feel glad to be alive, glad to be in Los Angeles.

. . .

Why would an ordinarily sensible woman wait 45 minutes outside a truck to secure the same plate of food she could nab in one-tenth that time at the related taquería next door? Sure, it’s the communal experience, the great brotherhood of the taco-eaters, but it is also the food. In tacos as in love, timing is everything, and if you’ve ever inhaled a taco of pork al pastor moments after the slivers of dripping meat have been hacked from the spit, you know: At that moment, desire and fulfillment are one. A great street taco is happiness translated into the language of warm tortillas, finely chopped onion and a hot sauce that bring you to your knees. The taqueros will usually ask if you want your tacos wrapped to go, but I have never known an order to last even the few seconds it takes to walk back to the car.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Dear Friends,

Let me be the first to welcome you to this new group blog by a quintet of taco truck lovers. Inspired by the efforts at Slice and YumTacos, our mission here is to chronicle taco truck deliciousness mainly here in the Golden State. If you have taco truck news to share elsewhere, by all means do so, but our focus is mainly on the nexus of culinary mobility — California.

Sadly, as you can read through in our archives, taco trucks are under attack in this great land of ours. So, in the interests of preserving our multi-cultural and heterogeneous food scape, I urge you to support this great institution.

Buen provecho!

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Let me be the first to say, this new LA County law is ludicrous, plain and simple. I really hope David LeBeouf is on the case. This is the same nonsensical argument that was used in Salinas last year.

 Los Angeles Times:

 Supervisors unanimously agreed to pass the law after business owners, particularly in East Los Angeles, complained that taco trucks were keeping brick-and-mortar restaurants from flourishing by drawing away customers.

“We have received many complaints from restaurant owners who say it is very hard to do business after 6 p.m. because catering trucks park very near restaurants,” said Louis Herrera, president of the Greater East Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. “Many restaurants are forced to close their doors because they cannot compete with a catering truck’s prices.”

Restaurant owners complained that the costs of operating a taco truck are minimal compared with the numerous bills that stationary businesses have to pay.

And I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post