Taco Truck: Back to an old friend

Hoboken has a plethora of restaurants. While this is almost always a wonderful thing, and a huge benefit to the Mile Square, there is a bit of a drawback. Sometimes days, weeks, and months can go by between times you return to the scene of a past meal. In a rare case, such as the one I experienced this past week, it can be a couple years.

The last time I had been to Taco Truck was freshman year as part of a photo hunt. My friend and colleague Ian Marcellana had just come off of a particularly spectacular 911 challenge at Cluck-U and wanted a taco for some reason. We went, we conquered, and we moved on. Now this week, in the pouring rain, I was searching for a quick place to grab lunch near the PATH before catching the shuttle back to Madison, when there it was: Taco Truck, just as I had remembered it. I went in and the thought hit me; that fateful night freshman year, I didn’t actually eat anything; it was time to change that, and change it fast.

Many of you know that the Taco Truck has been parked on campus these past few Tuesdays (or at least the SLN says so) for students to grab a bite instead of trekking all the way down to Newark Street to sample their fare. I was neither on campus, nor was it Tuesday, so I settled for the restaurant. The decor is relatively interesting – steel in many places, small order windows, and so on. It’s almost like they’re trying to recreate the feeling of ordering from a truck (even inside a building).

I decided to go with a torta, a triumverate of tacos, some plantanos for dessert, and a Mexican Coke, which my roommate Gabe told me was good. First, some introduction as to what a torta actually is: most Mexican cuisine is served in a tortilla (tacos, burritos, quesadillas, etc.), but a torta is essentially all the typical ingredients one would find in such dishes, but on a pressed sandwich. While the roll had soaked through a decent amount by the time I brought my spoils back to my office in New Jersey, I found their “Costilla” (pork) style torta to be really good, if not a little more spicy than anticipated.

The tacos, which were of the pollo asado variety, were more pleasant than your typical taco. Instead of being loaded down with greasy, drippy meat, the taco had just the right amount of chicken, was loaded down with vegetables, and topped with guacamole and cheese (grated, not liquid; another nice touch of Taco Truck). The tacos come in either twos or threes, and while they aren’t particularly large, they are excellent.

Onto dessert! Plantanos are plantains (like bananas, but different) fried and served with a bit of cream and sugar. One of the typical traps of fried plantains is having them come out too greasy or soggy; such was not the case. You could definitely taste their being fried, but the plantains were perfect on the inside, and the cream and sugar leave a nice touch and really make the plantanos feel like a dessert.

Surprisingly, the one thing from my order at Taco Truck that didn’t live up to expectation was the Mexican Coke. A bit of background: Coca-Cola offers a different formulation for their Mexican market than what America gets, and they also still sell them in the famous, curvy Coke bottle known more in popular culture than on shelves. Unfortunately, it didn’t blow me away as I had been promised, and I’m not sure why. Maybe they put something in it at Customs.

Taco Truck is one of the higher-quality fast food establishments in Hoboken. With a fresh take toward typical Mexican fare, truck or restaurant, you can’t go wrong. So, as the weather turns cold and the actual truck probably scales back its visits to campus, don’t fret, because the “home base” restaurant is just as good, if not better, and is absolutely worth a visit!