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This New Richmond Taco Truck Is a Cheesy, Meaty Social Media Sensation

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Overhead view of two Mexican dishes served in aluminum takeout trays, on a picnic table. On the left, potatoes are topped with meat, onions and guacamole. On the right is a cheesy mixed grill of onions, peppers and assorted meats, topped with a stack of tortillas.
Richmond's Tacos El Rulas specializes in cheesy, massively portioned dishes like its papá loca (left) and its alambre, both of which have gotten a lot of attention on social media. (Luke Tsai)

As a crowd lines up in front of the Tacos El Rulas #2 food truck on a recent Friday night, the real show is happening a few feet away in a long, tented section of the parking lot.

Bookended by a big charcoal grill on one side and a spinning, sizzling al pastor trompo on the other, the taqueros work their magic on the flat-tops. They hand-press fresh tortillas, griddle onions and bell peppers in bacon fat, and layer heaps of well-charred meat and melted cheese to assemble the over-the-top creations that have become the truck’s calling card: the “papá loca” (a Mexican American analogue to the fully loaded baked potato) and the alambre — a cheesy, street food–style mixed grill that’s popular in Mexico City.

What I love about El Rulas is the backyard party vibe — something about the tight cluster of picnic tables and cheerful banda music and the smell of smoky grilled meats seeping deep into your clothes. All in all, it’s about as fun a place as there is right now to grab tacos in the East Bay.

The Tacos El Rulas #2 taco truck displays the red, green and white of the Mexican flag. To its left, the truck's taqueros prepare food on flat-top grills. To the right is a tented dining area with picnic tables.
The taco truck’s parking lot setup feels as festive as a backyard party. (Luke Tsai)

“When a lot of people are here, it just feels like a small get-together,” says Angeles Lopez, a high school senior who helps her father, Raul Ramirez Rodriguez, operate the business. “It doesn’t really feel like I’m working.”

Tacos El Rulas isn’t exactly a newcomer to the East Bay taco scene. Early in the pandemic, one of its trucks — known for its outlandishly overstuffed tortas — debuted in the parking lot of a Berkeley auto shop. Its second truck used to be stationed at a smaller, more out-of-the-way location in Richmond, on Rumrill Road, before moving to its current spot on 23rd Street in March.

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The new location’s popularity is, at least in part, a social media success story. I had driven past a few dozen times since it opened but, even as a fan of the Berkeley truck, never got around to stopping by. Then, a few weeks ago, three or four different food influencer videos featuring Tacos El Rulas popped up on my Instagram feed in the span of a couple of days — this despite the fact that the truck has almost no presence on Yelp or in traditional food media.

Lopez explains that the viral Instagram and TikTok videos are a deliberate part of their marketing strategy. When business lagged in the taco truck’s first couple of months, her father reached out directly to several prominent Bay Area food influencers to see if they’d be willing to help him promote his food (for a fee, of course). It seems nearly all of them said yes. According to Lopez, early boosters like @booziebrunch were instrumental in helping to introduce Tacos El Rulas to the Black community, which now forms a large part of the truck’s fanbase.

A cheesy mix of meat, bell pappers, and onions served in an aluminum tray with a stack of corn tortillas on top.
The alambre in all its glory. (Luke Tsai)
A hand holding a taco stuffed with cheesy meat, onions, and peppers.
Assemble your own tacos. (Luke Tsai)

Of course, El Rulas’ massively portioned alambres and papás locas are uniquely suited for social media. (Everyone loves a good cheese pull, after all.) And it doesn’t hurt that those specific items — only available at the Richmond location — are legitimately delicious. The alambre is a gut-busting mix of chorizo, bacon, onions, peppers, pineapple, melted cheese and your choice of meat. As a crowning touch, a squirt of Worcestershire and Maggi seasoning adds a unique, almost stir fry–like savoriness, and the whole thing comes topped with a stack of handmade tortillas.

The papá loca is just as much of a crowd-pleaser: a couple of big-ass potatoes topped with an unconscionable amount of butter, bacon, cheese, onions, guacamole and, again, your choice of meat. A day’s worth of calories, probably, though it’s still hard to stop myself from eating the whole thing.

A man in black uses tongs to flip a rack of ribs cooking on the grill. A long chorizo sausage is coiled overhead on the frame of the grill.
The grill station features whole racks of pork ribs, ribeye steaks and a long coil of chorizo cooking overhead. (Luke Tsai)

If anything, the Tacos El Rulas menu has so many options that it can be intimidating for a first-timer. Their signature meat is Mexico City–style al pastor sliced off a pineapple-topped vertical spit, but every time I’ve visited, something new has caught my eye: garlic-butter shrimp, racks of pork ribs, flame-grilled ribeye steaks. They do the trendy quesabirria tacos here, as well as extra-crunchy vampiro tacos and quesadillas made with their fresh, hand-pressed tortillas. And while the mammoth torta Cubana has always been a star at the Berkeley truck, the Richmond location has a stand-alone torta menu with a whopping 18 varieties — more than you’ll find just about anywhere other than a dedicated torta shop.

“Something for everyone” might not be your typical taco truck credo, but so far, Tacos El Rulas’ maximalist, social media–driven approach seems to be working. Lopez says that customers regularly drive from as far away as Vallejo or San Francisco, often because they saw the alambre or the papá loca on TikTok or Instagram.

“Every time someone tells me that, I get amazed and surprised,” Lopez says. “But they always end up liking our food.”

A teenage girl in a black long-sleeved Nirvana T-shirt stands in front of a green taco truck.
Angeles Lopez (left), a rising high school senior, helps her father run both of the Tacos El Rulas food trucks. (Luke Tsai)

Tacos El Rulas #2 is located at 232 23rd St. in Richmond, in a parking lot shared by a beauty salon and an astrology shop. It’s open Sundays–Thursdays from 4 p.m. to midnight, and Fridays–Saurdays from 4 p.m. to 1 a.m.

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