If you’re looking for tacos—tripe or tongue—follow Horace Greeley’s advice, and go west, young man.
Specifically, go west on Betteravia. And keep going west. Stay right when it peels toward Guadalupe; keep going west, through the broccoli and the spinach, until you see the tanks.
They’re hard to miss: 6 miles outside of Santa Maria, the tallest structures the eye can see—a pair of corroded vats, still standing. They’re neighbors to a dilapidated refinery and a furnace stack with sheets of metal siding wilting out and down.
It’s a grimy industrial monument—a true ghost town, itself called Betteravia, where 350 people once processed sugar beets for Union Sugar.
Seven people were critically injured in a dust explosion that rocked the plant in 1988. It closed in 1993, and everybody left. Some of their homes and businesses—windswept, hollowed, and sealed with boards—are still there.
Now, in the shadow of those silos, there’s a taco truck: Tacos Lupe’s, parked in a gravel lot that once held a gas station.
“My dad, myself, my sister, and my son, and a daughter I had, who died—all named Lupe,” explained the owner, Guadalupe Lomeli. “Lots of Lupes. So Tacos Lupe’s, that’s what we called it.”
And, if you want a torta served up by someone who’s probably named Guadalupe, there’s no better ghost town taco truck to visit. Tacos Lupe’s follows the basic rules of taco trucks. Rule No. 1: The accommodation is spare—there’s a white plastic table with a couple of folding chairs.
Rule No. 2: The food is anything but spare. The portions are generous, the meat masterfully spiced, the service prompt—they even brought out a complimentary soda.
The meat’s particularly good, and it makes sense: Lomeli used to be a butcher. Probe his taco-making process, and his answers are simple: “It comes in boxes, and we cook it,” he said plainly. “We add onion and garlic, and a little bit of salt, and we put it on the grill—the spice—the spice is secret,” he laughed.
His favorite meat is the lengua—the tongue of the cow. “I don’t know why,” he said. “I’ve always liked it. It’s what I go to when I get lunch.”
The sides, also complimentary: fresh radish and more pickled vegetables than I could eat.
A dumb question from a reporter: Is working in a hot truck, surrounded by your immediate family, sometimes stressful? Lomeli giggled. “Of course, there’s always stress.” But, since he bought the truck, it’s been busy—they have all kinds of work, he said.
And another kind of bonus, albeit one that can’t be eaten: what seems to be a real community of regulars—cars pulling up on the gravel, unloading nurses in scrubs, and farmworkers still covered in dust, exchanging news, gossiping, teasing, whatever, and Lupe is at the window.
Then, with their foiled plates of food, they scurry back to their cars, rolling back onto Betteravia Road—onward into a sea of row crops and dust, all of it shimmering under the midday sun.
Staff Writer Sean McNulty can be reached at smcnulty@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 10-17, 2015.
