Most Northerners are used to food trucks offering the standard fare of homemade pogos and poutine, but the Taco Bar Food Truck in the South End brings a fun-loving Mexican fiesta flair to the mobile food game.
The truck, parked at the Regent Street Canadian Tire, offers customers a wide variety of Mexican eats right down to the dessert.
Synolie Pratt, who is originally from Sri Lanka, has always had a love for Mexico and its tantalizing flavours.
In fact, this fall she’s heading to Acapulco for more ideas.
“My boyfriend (Jonathan Tulloch) and I are going to experience more foods, kids friendly dishes and take a cooking class,” Pratt said. “We like coming up with different spins on things.”
Pratt said the truck, which is a rental from a company in the Toronto area, will be returned for the season in mid-October.
Until then, the truck is serving about 60 customers per day with everything from the Big Dipper to the Crunch Wrap.
The Crunch Wrap with its ground beef, pico de gallo, tostado and mozzarella is reminiscent of a popular fast food chain menu item, but a homemade version. The Big Dipper offers three slow-cooked beef birria tacos with melted mozzarella.
“The onions and cilantro really make the dish, so I am always disappointed when some people hold the cilantro due to them inheriting the soap gene,” Pratt said, referring to the curious fact that some people have a dislike for cilantro that is genetic — they have a variation in a group of olfactory-receptor genes which makes them particularly sensitive to the aldehydes in cilantro leaves, giving them a distincly soapy flavour, as related by Britannica.com.
The frequency of this genetic quirk is small and varies by population, with some studies showing around 20 per cent of people of East Asian descent with the gene variation. It’s less common in Central America and India where the spice is the most popular.
Back to the food truck though. As for a sweet palate cleansing treat, the dessert is nachos with deep-fried flour tortilla with toasted cinnamon sugar on top, tossed with regular and white chocolate sauce and with a blend of strawberries and blueberries on top.
Pratt said they are really trying to support local businesses with homemade ingredients in the mango salsa, guacamole and ingredients from The Embassy Latino Market on The Kingsway.
Pratt studied business at Cambrian College and said she has always loved the food industry.
“I always dreamed of owning a restaurant, but it seemed daunting, so a food truck seemed like a nice alternative,” she said.
Next spring, the Taco Bar truck will return with plans to offer a poutine made with Birria meat, sour cream and pickled onions.
“Given we are a food truck in Sudbury, many stop and ask for french fries,” she said.
She also plans to offer watermelon fresca, as well as a mango slushy otherwise known as a “mangonatta” with a possible liquor license.
The Taco Bar Food Truck is on Facebook and Instagram, and you can visit the website, TheTacoBarSudbury.com. It’s located at 2259 Regent Street in the South End Canadian Tire parking lot.
The hours of operation are noon to 7:30 p.m., Wednesday to Sunday.
Anastasia Rioux is a writer in Greater Sudbury. Let’s Eat! is made possible by our Community Leaders Program.
