Mobile 'Taquerias' Bring New Flavors to New Orleans

July 13, 2007— -- NEW ORLEANS - The smell of sizzling beef and warm flour tortillas beckons from a food truck perched at an intersection here.

Inside, Maria Jimenez doles out tacos and fajitas thick with meat, cheese and lettuce. Most people who come to Taqueria Los Poblanos order beef or pork tacos. But regulars also like the minced lengua, or tongue.

Food trucks such as this one - offering flavorful, cheap and authentic Latin-American fare - were all but non-existent before Katrina. They now dot the landscape in New Orleans and neighboring Jefferson Parish. Their regular customers are the Hispanic laborers who have migrated here to rebuild homes, but they've also built a following among local residents.

In the New Orleans area, permits issued to mobile vendors that prepare food on their trucks - such as taquerias and hot dog vendors - jumped nearly eightfold from July 2005 to July 2006, the state health department says. Through July 2007, another 83 new permits were issued, up 36 percent from last year.

As it turns out, not everyone is a fan. In June, the Jefferson Parish Council voted unanimously to bar mobile vendors from setting up shop at some of the busiest thoroughfares in the area. The parish also limited how long the trucks could be stationary: 30 minutes. And it decreed that mobile vendors who stay at one site any longer must have a restroom accessible to customers.

Food vendors complain that the parish is trying to put them out of business. The rules make it nearly impossible for mobile vendors to work in the area, says Carmela Diaz, owner of Taqueria Sanchez.

"We are going to fight it," Diaz says. "This is not a sit-down restaurant. People take food to go," so the taqueria shouldn't be required to have a restroom.

But Jeff Charlet, regulatory manager of the Jefferson Parish Department of Inspection and Code Enforcement, says the state has long required take-out and dine-in eateries, as well as stores, office buildings and schools, to have bathrooms accessible to the public.