Taqueria La Autentica
FOOD TRUCKThere are a lot of taco trucks in Kalamazoo right now.
And I’m 100% here for it.
A few weeks ago, I was driving around the Edison Neighborhood by Kik Pool. As I turned down Lake Street to head back towards Portage Street, something caught my attention.
There was a food truck, fully open, parked in the yard next to a house. I didn’t have time to stop then but I made a mental note. It was a taco truck I hadn’t seen yet and every day is a good day for tacos.
Earlier this week, I got off work a little early and started to head towards Wings Event Center to pick up my daughter. I still had some time to kill and I was hungry. I usually take Portage Street from downtown Kalamazoo to get to WEC anyway so that day was going to be my day to stop and get tacos.
Taqueria La Autentica was parked at 644 Lake Street just to the east of Bank Street and the entrance to the Kalamazoo Farmers Market. The truck moves around and does events too but it looks like on days they are not doing an event, you can find them parked next to the driveway of this house not too far from Upjohn Park and Kik Pool.
The menu is written out on a dry erase board on the counter in front of the order window. It’s completely in Spanish but that didn’t really matter. I knew I wanted tacos and I knew I wanted steak tacos so when it was my turn to order, I put in an order for four steak tacos. The cost was $16 which I paid for on my card.
There was a couple in front of me who had a pretty big order so it took ten minutes or so for my order to be bagged up and handed out the window.
There’s no place to sit and eat…I mean, it is a food truck….but I was still pretty hungry and didn’t want to wait. I just went back to my car parked on the street and ate on the hood of my car.
The four tacos were tucked neatly into a to-go container with a grilled onion and jalapeno included on top. There were also two small containers of hot sauce. One green. One red.
I’m pretty sure I say this every time I blog about a taco truck but it’s true. It’s really hard to screw up tacos. Just by their nature, they are delicious. These tacos were just as delicious as I was hoping they would be when I stopped. The double layered corn tortillas were soft enough to easily bite through. There was an abundance of grilled steak topped with chopped cilantro and white onion. I easily polished off these four tacos in a matter of minutes and was left wanting more but alas, I had to continue on my way to pick up my daughter…at least until my wife texted me right after I left to tell me she was sticking around and I didn’t need to come get her. Oh well…I still got tasty tacos.
Taqueria La Autentica is another pretty amazing taco truck in Kalamazoo. I drove by at least two other trucks after I left their location and all of them had lines so there’s clearly a demand for this kind of delicious street food in Kalamazoo. They actually have a really good location near the park and near the Farmers Market so they can serve patrons of both without having to pay any types of fees to be on City property. It felt a little weird at first walking up someone’s driveway to get tacos but I got over that pretty quickly.
SW Michigan Dining 