Food truck quick bite: Judie's Tacos Locos...carnitas!
Yikes! Seven days since writing a food post, I'm getting totally behind on all this food thing. This is what happens when a job just sucks up all your time! But what are ya' gonna do, SF is an expensive city to eat in so one has gotta make a living right? Though, part of that is also looking for food on the go and hopefully on the cheap. Well, less expensive anyway, not fast food and tasty, ugh, you know what I mean. Usually this leads me to my fave kind of places--food truck parks. This time I'm circling around Spark Social SF looking for something I haven't had before.
You would think this would be easy, but it is late-ish on a Saturday night, the park is near closing and it is starting to reach the point where I've hit up practically every food truck in 20 mile radius of SF. Undaunted though I decide to just buck up and try what looks like the only truck there (besides the poke--raw fish!--one) Judie's Tacos Locos.
Honestly, I have seen them here before but was always like, eh, I can get tacos anywhere in this town and some pretty darn good ones down in The Mission and I just wanna try something different. But with time running out and options being limited I guess there was no time like the present. Funnily enough, when I went up to the window to order seems it had been a pretty busy day for them and at this point all they actually had left were tacos, hmm, okay then. I was kind of hungry and their tacos were priced at $3 each or you could go all in and get four for $10. And yes, I was that hungry and ponied up the money for two carnitas and two chicken tacos.
carnitas and chicken tacos
It was definitely a full plate of food. They were of the soft taco variety where they give you two steamed shells that are kind of stuck together so it is like getting two tacos for one. It also came with the chips, chopped onions, cilantro and green tomato sauce you see above. More than I bargained for and hungry enough I can't really quibble about the price for what I got.
The chicken was pretty standard bits of white meat which had been grilled a tad too long and were on the dry side. The meat could have benefited with more of the green sauce which I really liked for it sharp spiciness. Mixed well with all the cilantro (which I also like) and the sweet bitter tang of onion. The real star here though was the pork, and not just because I like pork. This was not your standard carnitas of being cooked on a grill and then sometimes quickly deep fried, theirs was shredded pieces of slow cooked juiciness with just the right bit of saltiness. It was really close to the kind of pulled pork Hawaiian or good ol' NC style, just without the vinegar seasoning. I won't say this was like some kind of angels singing revelation kind of pork eating experience, but it was pretty darn tasty and there was enough between the meat and soft white corn shells to make it a satisfying meal, late night snack, glad I picked, ended up at this taco truck kind of thing.
While I could say maybe I was really hungry and my stomach and taste buds were just desperate for something that was even close to good, I feel like I've eaten around enough to know the difference between that feeling and something which is actually pretty good. I mean, the chicken ones were blah after all, which kind of made the carnitas stand out even more. I do like to think of myself as a bit of a pork connoisseur (YES, I will wear that mantle proudly, thank you!) from my years and years and years and so on of eating it and can confidently offer up these from Judie's Tacos Locos as a tasty food truck treat.
