Kind of Meat: BBQ Beef
Cost: $2.50
Topping: Onions, green chilies, BBQ sauce, cabbage
A sign on Sixth street, near 1-35, read "Korean BBQ -->", which I followed like an Eloi led to the Morlock whistle in the Time Machine. It led me into an alley. A man hung out of the open door of his rumbling "TaKorea" truck.
The sliding back door was pulled up, but covered with gray mosquito nets that flapped in the wind, giving it that Silence of the Lambs look.
"What do you recommend?" I asked, staring at the chalkboard menu. He mumbled, "BBQ beef." I ordered one and sat on the curb. A thought occurred to me that this was less a taco truck, and more the secret lair and decoy of a serial killer. He / she / Leatherface would come bounding out the back, pushing through the flaps with his chain saw, and tear me into taco meat.
Instead, a girl came out. She handed me a paper bowl with a pillowy, corn tortilla-wrapped taco in the center.
Heaven is a taco truck, I'm sure of it. There's no purer moment of food joy than taking a cilantro-zested, onion-filled taco from the back of a truck and eating on the curb. It proves that it doesn't matter what a restaurant, or food-serving-vehicle, looks or feels like --just what comes out the back. The beef was rich, with a juicy quality that beats the over-done tacos of every-where-else in Fajita Town.
Fresh corn tortillas, BBQ sauce (Korean style, with a sweeter flavor), onions and some shredded cabbage was the rest. It crunched and then flooded my mouth with flavor. A little sweetness from the BBQ sauce. Basically a perfect taco. Two to three bites. I sat on the curb, completely satisfied and wondering if I should go ahead and order the rest of the menu. I could stuff the tacos in my pants, I thought. But that would have been suspicious. I could have looked like some sort of serial killer.
