Dining Adventures of Erick: ABQ Food Trucks - Talin Market On Wednesdays

The Food Trucks lined up

Food trucks have become pretty popular in the past few years with Food Network shows and food trucks evolving to cater to foodies around the country. There is the stigma of "roach coaches" associated with food coming from a truck, but in the past few years many of my meals have come from these mobile culinary facilities. Thankfully, I have not gotten food poisoning or found any surprises in my food. In Albuquerque on Wednesdays at the Talin market we are fortunate to see a pod or group of food trucks set up shop in the parking lot. The day I went was a lot attendance day according to one of the vendors. According to him they normally get about six trucks, but today it was only three. He speculated it was due to bad weather, but I was glad to have the time to see the trucks. Overall, it's a really cool experience to be able to try different foods in one outing. If you go keep in mind seating is an issue, there is no real seating or tables. Below are summaries of my experience at each truck.

Make My Lunch

Potato Bacon Soup

The lady who ran Make My Lunch was very pleasant. I think she became excited once she knew of my excitement about the experience about the Talin Wednesday food truck gathering. She struck me as a well seasoned veteran of the food truck circuit and she gave me some stickers for the food truck group as well as for her truck. The truck struck me as a deli on wheels. She offered some sandwiches that looked like great selections, but I was limited by my crazy idea of trying each truck. From my little research into her business I guess her company does catering services for large events and will make you a healthy lunch and drop it off. Maybe this food truck gathering is a way for her to advertize.

I wanted to get a Cuban sandwich, but I opted for the soup of the day option which was the potato bacon soup pictured to the right. I like how she minded the details like her truck presentation, choice of quality utensils, and food appearance. The soup tasted good, but not great. This may have been due to her trying to reduce fat content in her food. The potatoes were undercooked, the texture was waxy and little crunchy for a potato. Overall good, but not great. I may need to try more of her food to give a better review.

Bill's BBQ Truck

BBQ is easy to make, great BBQ is very difficult to make. I've judged a few BBQ contest and cooking on the road is very hard, but a lot of folks do it. Talking to Bill was a very pleasant experience, but his Q is good, but not great. I was sort of put off by the color of his sauce. I think it was too much mustard that gave it that odd color. The meat's favor was OK, but it was over cooked because the meat just fell off the bone. I know what you're thinking, "isn't fall off the bone good?" It is not in competitions and this instance. I felt in this case the fall off the bone was too much fall off the bone, the texture in the meat was mushy. Bill did have a very nice smoker.

Oz Patisserie

Oz Patisserie was great but due to being on the road their pastry that I bough was still frozen. I broke my first utensile digging into my dessert which was excellent, but needed some time to thaw.

Overall, it was a great experience. We are not on the same scale or quality as other markets but kudos to Albuquerque and Talin for persuiing the food trucks. I would give all of this a score of three and half stars out of five.