Grub of the Week
The Night Bullet
Hole Taco Was Born
It was somewhere around 11pm and seven of us were crammed into a minivan that smelled like bike grease, airport, and bad decisions. Bikes, gear, and grown adults somehow folded into a space that wasn't built for any of it. Sedona was calling. But first, someone needed to eat.
That someone was me.
I wanted tacos. Real tacos. Not the kind with a number combo and a drive-through window — the kind from a place where the cook never set foot in a culinary school, never worked a restaurant line, and doesn't need to — because he learned to cook on the street, from the soul, the way tacos were meant to be made. I grew up in Southern California. I know what a taco is supposed to be.
Someone asked how we'd find a place like that in the middle of the night.
"Good tacos only come from places with bullet holes in them."
The car went quiet. Then everyone laughed. Then someone said we should find one.
We found a beat-up taco truck parked next to a liquor store. The guy running it looked like he'd just crawled out of a junkyard. The tacos were absolutely perfect.
The last flight in was our designated driver — stone cold sober, landed to find six grown adults already well into the drinks, and somehow inherited the responsibility of babysitting all of us for the rest of the night. He never complained once. We owe him tacos for life.
That night I became Bullet Hole Taco.