This festival – in the form of the gallery below – is of my own making, thanks to the December 27 opening of The Taco Truck at the Princeton Shopping Center. I’ve been there a few times so far, most recently to check out the nachos for a Packet In The Kitchen recipe column I’m working on for January 23. I also made a run up to La Costeñita in Hillsborough yesterday, which I reviewed for the Packet TimeOff last winter. (I eventually put that on NJ Spice, here.)
I remain devoted to La Costeñita (and it’s vivacious owner Alicia Arango), but it sure is nice having an option closer to home, and I will write more about that soon for TimeOff. I keep thinking of how when I moved back to Princeton from Colorado in the mid-1980s, there was a virtual Mexican food desert here as far as what I liked in Mexican food, so I started growing my own tomatillos and chiles and cilantro so I could make some of my favorite dishes, like chile rellenos, and my favorite tomatillo-green chile sauce. Then I got hooked on fish tacos, which were near impossible to find in this area – but that’s changed too, although I still prefer my own to any I’ve been served around here.
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- Taco Truck Tacos al Pastor
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- Taco Truck fish taco (rt) & carnitas (l)
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- Taco Truck nachos
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- La Costeñita tamale
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- La Costeñita Nachos
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- La Costeñita Flautas
NJ SPICE 
Faith, delightful, appealing pictures here. Thank you! For our family, ‘Mexican’ and southwest food was all tied up with skiing, also Aspen, as it turned out. My Swiss husband had never tasted anything LIKE the foods we found in the tiniest places driving from Denver to Aspen. We even went so far as to have a chili ‘ski-in’ party one Spring Break, when most of the girls’ friends werfe out there with their families. They’d never tasted ‘Mexican’ food either. I know mine couldn’t hold a candle to yours, but we sure had fun! Thanks for the smiles! C
Aspen is where I first had Mexican food and it was a constant during my years there. I still think about the blue corn tortillas that La Cocina used to make their stacked cheese enchiladas, often ordered with a fried egg on top.