Food truck profi le: Tacos Esperanza on Soscol Avenue

Tacos La Esperanza:

Baja-style tacos and meals at your fingertips

JENNIFER HUFFMAN jhuffman@napanews.com

You won’t have to go far for some of Napa’s best Baja-style tacos and food. Just make a stop at Tacos La Esperanza.

Parked almost in front of Matthew’s Mattress, at 1551 Soscol Ave., the food truck is open 10:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., 365 days-a-year.

“It doesn’t matter what holiday,”—he’s open, said owner Rene Gonzalez Jr.

“We gotta stay loyal to our customers.”

WHO’S MAKING YOUR FOOD? Gonzalez himself. “I’m the boss.”

WHAT YOU’RE EATING:

Tacos, burritos, quesadillas, tortas, aguas frescas and chips and salsa. Fill with your choice of asada (steak), pollo (chicken), carnitas (fried pork), pastor (spicy pork), camaron (shrimp), pescado (fish), lengua (beef tounge) or birria (spicy shredded beef).

On a recent visit, two diners tried a varied selection of foods from La Esperanza including an al pastor taco, a shrimp taco, a fish taco, carne asada taco, quesabirria taco and a shrimp torta.

The shrimp taco, a favorite, was pleasantly sweet but also acidic. A carne asada taco wasn’t too dry and had a wonderful balanced flavor.

The quesabirria featured a crunchy corn tortilla with the shredded meat and a spicy sauce inside. Lightly battered fish with an aoli-type sauce was another winner. The shrimp torta comes on a fluffy “bun” that got a little soggy on the way home, but that didn’t stop us from eating every bite.

BACK STORY:

Gonzalez has operated Tacos La Esperanza on the 1500 block of Soscol Avenue for more than a dozen years.

The food business is in his blood. It began with Gonzalez’s great-grandmother’s restaurant in the Mexican state of Ensenada – the birthplace of the recipe for the Baja-style fish tacos that his truck serves today. His father and his uncles have run food trucks all over the Bay Area since the 1970s, according to Gonzalez. Even his 75-year-old grandfather still slings tacos out of his truck in Oakland.

DON’T LEAVE WITHOUT TRYING:

The Ensenada fish tacos.

“It’s a traditional recipe from my hometown,” said Gonzalez.

PRICE RANGE:

Tacos start at $2.50. The most expensive item is a big shrimp burrito: it’s $18.

HIS PRIME PARKING SPOT:

Soscol Avenue is a great location, he noted. “We’re close to downtown, the Westin, the River Terrace Inn, the Oxbow… More than 50% of our customers are tourists.”

Photos by Jennifer Huffman, Register

Rene Gonzalez Jr., is the owner of Napa food truck Tacos La Esperanza. They have been found on the 1500 block of Soscol Avenue for more than a dozen years. Tacos La Esperanza has a menu with items that range from just a few dollars up to about $18.

promotes his business on social media. He doesn’t have to. His customers come from all over, including Vallejo, Fairfield and tourists from out of state and even out of the country. “We keep it old school,” and customers find him by word of mouth, said Gonzalez. “It’s better that way.”

WORD TO THE WISE:

“You can get a beef burrito anywhere,” Gonzalez said. La Esperanza makes a quesabirria, which is birria-style cooked beef folded into a tortilla with spices. Or try a steak and shrimp burrito, he advised.