Time for Tacos

Mr. French and I just LOVE food trucks. Unfortunately there aren't any trucks down in our neck of the woods (anymore) but luckily San Jose isn't too far away and at least once a year we get to travel up for the Taco Festival of Innovation. Isn't that a mouthful of a name?

This lovely gathering of 40 or so local food trucks has been going on for 3 years now and we've been every single year. Each year they get a little more organized and the entry into the festival is a bit smoother. The meeting planner in me winces each year when they don't have enough signs or people at the entrance but at least this year they started processing pre-sales early and gave us all wristbands so that we could stampede  walk like ladies and gentlemen into the fairgrounds at the rope-drop with no delays like we've experienced the last two years.

Once inside you're overwhelmed by the sheer number of trucks.

There is variety as well. Even though this is called a "taco festival" there are many cuisines represented - Mexican (naturally), Korean, Japanese, Middle Eastern, traditional BBQ, Hawaiian and Indian are just some of them. Each truck offers their own unique cuisine in the form of a taco so that it's easy to eat and affordable. All menu items are under $5 so that you can sample from multiple trucks. That's our favorite part of this particular festival.

Some of our favorite tacos include pork belly, falafel and kahlua pork with bacon jam. I'm especially fond of the bacon jam!

But if I'm going to be perfectly honest, the tacos are not my main objective. They could take away all the taco trucks and I'd still make the drive up there for this

Fairycakes are little bits of heaven! I discovered them at the first Taco Festival and fell in love. I've been thrilled that they have attended every year. I hope they never stop. They are the best cupcakes I've ever eaten...and I've eaten a lot so I know what I'm talking about. They have a huge variety of flavors and they are always coming up with new ones.

The last two years we've just bought one cupcake each to eat at the festival. This year we got smart (it was bound to happen eventually) and brought home a box of six...ok, technically only 4 made it home. We tried salted caramel, maple bacon, turtle cheesecake and Boston cream pie.

My favorite was maple bacon...or maybe salted caramel...possibly Boston cream pie...although you can't count turtle cheesecake out of the running. ;-)

I can't wait to go again next year!