Photo used with permission under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 3.0, from flickr user rknickme

We had the opportunity to find out more about The [mysterious] Adelita truck and wanted to share since we get so many questions about them!

Who is behind The Adelita truck?

The Adelita truck is run by Alexis Vejar and Teddy Vejar who are two brothers from Michoacan. Alexis cooks it and Teddy sells it.

Alexis is an artist with a background in painting.  He’s worked almost every job in the food service industry, starting at the tender age 15 making sandwiches at Hero’s sandwichshop on the corner of Addison and Western with many many stops along the way.

Teddy is a cowboy hat wearing foodie with an insatiable apetite for mexican food, its regional variations, and its history. He’s also a former locomotive engineer for Union Pacific railroad and was roped into this by his brother after perhaps one too many drinks.

What made you want to start a food truck?

Our family owned a food truck when we where young living in Mexico, in addition to a sandwich shop called Teddy’s in the local bus terminal. We love street food and have traveled all our lives to cities that have amazing street food cultures. The main inspiration for all of this was our father. Since the age of 8-9 our father, the original Mexican foodie, took us on month-long culinary road trips though out Mexico teaching us about food and making us eat from every cart, roadside stand, and hole in the wall. We would eat cabrito in the border towns then drive down to Veracruz just so we could say we know what pezcado a la Veracruzana was really supposed to taste like; How you grilled the fish and what ingredients where and weren’t traditional. We would drive to Mexico City to have huitlacoche and flor de calabasa, then to Toluca for a few short hours just so we could could try the neon green chorizo. We’ve been to almost every state and tried almost every dish imaginable. Even the ones with bugs…yummy yummy bugs.

How has current legislation affected your menu/truck?

The most difficult thing has been managing fresh vs hot elements which is key in Mexican cooking. Most mexican food craves some sort of acid or fresh element to balance out the chilies and heavier more savory elements. Doing that without handing someone a jigsaw puzzel of a meal and being wasteful with containers has been the biggest pain.

City of Chicago, please just let me squeeze some lime or dab on some sour cream on the food. It’s for mother nature and to the benefit of our customers.

What was the inspiration for the name of your truck?

The name is the Adelita and, for lack of a better term, she can be considered the Mexican Rosie the Riveter. It was a name applied to all the women during the Mexican revolution who took up arms. It’s an ode to the character of the Mexican women (our mothers) who are the backbone of Mexican cuisine. This being a food truck revolution we are experiencing, we figured we better come out guns a blazin’.

What foods can people expect to find from you?

We specialized in what I would consider Mexican comfort food. We make traditional dishes (with a few curve balls thrown in) from scratch and using only the best ingredients. We turn traditional Mexican dishes you’re not liable to find at your standard taqueria into savory tortas. We also have rotating specials where we explore the world of Mexican on-the-go edibles. Such as flautas, tacos, dobladitas, tlacoyos, quesadillas, and many more. Mostly, we cook the food we want to eat!

What do you love about the Chicago food truck scene?

We love the pace of the work, the people, the camaraderie, getting to drive all over the beautiful city of Chicago, making good food, getting to try all the delicious food that all the other trucks are making. What’s not to love!

What has surprised you most (if anything) about running a food truck?

We sort of understood what we where getting into, so not much. The community of food truckers itself has been the most surprising aspect I would say. Matt Maroni [of gaztro-wagon] and others have done a great job in organizing and turning this business in Chicago into a great community of people all working towards a common goal.

What is an obstacle/challenge for you right now? What have you found to be encouraging?

As with anything there are learning curves. Figuring out where to park and when was a good one. We run a small, tight ship, so time management has been a challenge. But the positive reactions we’ve receive have been very encouraging. The first time someone came up to us and knew what they wanted before reading the menu was a good day.

Will your menu be fixed or will it change?

Our menu has a small core of fixed items such as the chicken tinga torta, the cochinita pibil torta, the choriqueso torta, our veggie/calabasitas torta, beer braised beef cheek torta. Also, sides like the street style Elote cups with all the fixings, our delicious ever green guacamole and chips, and the newly introduced cactus salad.

Other then that we try to vary the menu as much as we can. The last month was so hectic we never had time to do great variety. But today we did pasilla braised short ribs and chiles rellenos and a strawberry agua fresca. Next week we are doing a cuban torta, which is especially popular in Mexico City, a carnitas torta, and chiles rellenos on Friday again.