Late-night taco truck

When Scott asked me if I wanted to take a drive to Oakland, I asked him if he had eaten and if we could go to the taco trunk. With his answers, I said yes.

We got in his car, drove across the bridge, dropped off some ski equipment, and navigated our way around Lake Merritt to the intersection of International Blvd. and 22nd St., where the Sinaloa taco truck sits.

For someone who sports a “I Hella [Heart] Oakland” t-shirt, Scott had never been there. And, as silly as it may seem, I was slightly nervous, and not so much about the fact that it was 9:30 at night and we were standing on a street corner in an Oakland neighborhood that has a history of violent crime. But, rather, I was nervous that Scott wouldn’t like it, that he’d wonder why I’d drive across the Bay to eat from a truck in a dicey neighborhood.

I stepped up to the truck, raised my head high, and ordered two carne asada tacos and an horchata for me, and a carne asada burrito and a Squirt for Scott. As we waited for our food, a man of questionable sanity kept mumbling stuff to us and gestured for us to look at his leg. I tried to pretend that he wasn’t there.

We took our food to a table nearby and dug in. My tacos looked small. There was no pilings of lettuce, beans, rice, sour cream, guacamole, diced tomatoes, or any other sort of extravagance you might find at a San Francisco Mission taqueria. There was no need to eat these tacos with a knife and fork either. These small tacos were tacos at their simple best: two warm corn tortillas that are chewy and just barely crisp around the edges, a small mound of chopped grilled beef, a dollop of salsa, a sprinkling of chopped cilantro, along with sliced radishes, a whole pickled jalapeno pepper, and a wedge of lime on the side. It was delicious. Scott’s burrito was just as simple, with just meat, cheese, beans, and rice. It felt like LA.

We finished up, cleared our table, gave the mumbling man with a story about a leg a dollar, got back in the car, and drove back to across the Bay Bridge. Scott thanked me for taking him there. And, I wondered aloud who else would have been up for a late-night taco truck run in the heart of seedy Oakland?