Street-food-loving Minnesotans, hold on to your hats: The taco truck of your dreams is coming. I talked to Tim McKee this morning and indeed he confirmed rumors I’d heard swirling: A bona fide 26-foot taco truck is currently whizzing its way to Minneapolis, from Miami, and once it is outfitted, licensed, and all that good stuff, it will take to the highways and byways and serve you some tacos—especially if you live in St. Paul.
McKee reports that Minneapolis essentially “wants nothing to do” with taco trucks, but St. Paul is more accomodating, so we probably won’t see a Barrio taco truck pulled up on Nicollet Mall at 2 a.m. “We’re going to have to grow a little as a city before anyone’s going to let that happen, I guess,” notes McKee, though it’s a lot easier to pull permits for places like outdoor festivals, farmers’ markets, and the like. “We’re not going to go anywhere that puts us in competition with our fellow chefs,” notes McKee, clearly referencing Lisa Carlson and Carrie Summers’ Chef Shack, “but we’ll be somewhere. Probably not till 2010 though, since we’re already up against the end of the season.”
But that’s not all! McKee will have a catering license, generator, hand-washing facilities, and the whole shebang, enabling him to come to your house, land, school, or whatever other private property you’ve got that would be spruced up with some fancy tacos.
“You mean if I’m some rich dude with a spread on Lake Minnetonka and a kid graduating high school next summer, I can have a taco truck in my driveway?”
“Yes and no,” said McKee. “Remember, it’s Barrio, you don’t have to be a rich dude.”
The menu is to-be-determined, but McKee says it will likely be pretty close to what they have at Barrio, including specials, like their tongue tacos, which, in case anyone cares, are much more thinly sliced than the signature Chef Shack tongue tacos.
Yes, tongue-taco-lovers, summer 2010 looks to offer the opportunity to drive from farmers’ market to farmers’ market, sampling tongue tacos as you go.
