An episode of Ugly Delicious featuring LA tacos was dismissive of taco trucks that didn’t make their tortillas by hand. I found their comments amusing because it’s really uncommon to find handmade tortillas in taco trucks in the SFBA, right? Do any of the Oakland trucks, like the ones covered in John Birdsall’s 2016 eater guide, use handmade, or at least decent quality, tortillas?
Off the top of my head, and I’m admittedly out of touch with the food truck scene, I can think of only one:
the Redwood City truck for Los Carnalitos, which uses fresh masa
There’s one other truck, but its mobile abilities are TBA:
The rest I can think of are Farmer’s Market predecessors/offshoots of brick and mortars. Not quite the same as taco trucks, and only once a week deals:
El Buen Comer at the Saturday Noe Valley farmer’s market, fresh masa
El Huarache Loco at the Saturday Alemany farmer’s market, fresh masa if I recall correctly
Primavera at the Saturday Ferry Building Farmer’s Market, an offshoot of El Molina Central, fresh masa
i can’t find the article i recently read but it said that unless tortillas are made with fresh masa, as opposed to masa harina, you’re not really going to be able to tell the difference between hand-made and store-bought. the article said fresh masa was becoming harder and harder to find even in Mexico, and most people there used masa harina too. I’m going to buy some fresh masa at La Palma Mexicatessan in the Mission soon and try making them at home. I’ve made masa harina ones at home and have always been a bit disappointed that they’re just not that much better than what i get in the stores (unless you get those really thick hand-made ones).
Interesting. I’ve noticed that some chain Mexican markets make their fresh tortillas from giant bags of masa harina.
I’d like to think I can always tell the difference between masa harina and fresh masa, but the reality is that I’m stumped a lot. Gallardos told me they use fresh masa, but it tastes like masa harina to me and puffs up much more too.
I stopped trying to make tortillas from La Palma’s fresh masa—- their machine rolled tortillas come out better than what I can do with a tortilla press! (I do buy their masa for making pupusas though)