The Taco Truck: How Mexican Street Food Is Transforming the American City

by Robert Lemon

Icons of Mexican cultural identity and America's melting pot ideal, taco trucks have transformed cityscapes from coast to coast. The taco truck radiates Mexican culture within non-Mexican spaces with a presence—sometimes desired, sometimes resented—that turns a public street corner into a bustling business.

Drawing on interviews with taco truck workers and his own skills as a geographer, Robert Lemon illuminates new truths about foodways, community, and the unexpected places where ethnicity, class, and culture meet. Lemon focuses on the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, and Columbus, Ohio, to show how the arrival of taco trucks challenge preconceived ideas of urban planning even as cities use them to reinvent whole neighborhoods. As Lemon charts the relationships between food practices and city spaces, he uncovers the many ways residents and politicians alike contest, celebrate, and influence not only where your favorite truck parks, but what's on the menu.

• ISBN10: 025204245X
• ISBN13: 9780252042454
• Publish Date: 16 May 2019
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: University of Illinois Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 240
• Language: English

Reviews

[Jeff Sexton]

Intriguing Investigation. This academic study of exactly what is a 'taco truck' - and yes, the author makes a very clear distinction between the original concept of a taco truck vs the food trucks so common in American cities and American media today - and how the practices of taco trucks enabled and evolved with and through the food truck revolution truly is extremely intriguing. The dry academic prose is a bit of a knock for a more widespread audience, which could benefit from reading the analysis here, but is surmountable - I personally used my Kindle Fire's text to speech option, and in that manner I was able to process the book far more readily. In particular, the various ways the taco trucks and later food trucks have anarchically evolved in each of the three markets studied was simply amazing to see, and the author's in depth knowledge of these issues - apparently he has been studying them for at least 15 years at this time - is readily apparent. Overall the dry academic prose isn't enough to take away from the history and strong analysis here, so it still rates as 5 stars.