Marie Antoinette Crepes and Taco Cielo Foodtrucks – St. Paul, MN

It was food truck Wednesday for our little lunch group. We met in Mears Park this time for a change of culinary scenery. There are fewer trucks here, but they all had many things I wanted. It was a difficult decision, but thankfully, Fanny convinced me I could have an appetizer Crepe and still get tacos. She’s super smart.

Standing in line at the Marie Antoinette Crepe truck allowed me to change my mind on what to order at least 15 times. Everything on the menu sounded good. I thought about going light with a dessert kind of crepe. They had one with fresh strawberries and a cognac sauce, and another one with bananas and salted caramel, and another one with lemon and butter. But then the savory ones sounded incredible too: Turkey and cheddar with paprika aioli and one with fig preserves and goat cheese and another one called the Croque Monsieur (apparently the most popular seller). I went with what was popular, though it wasn’t an easy decision. The girl whips them up right in front of you. Ladles the batter onto the flat top, spins it with the spinny-flattener-thing (technical French culinary term), flips it, puts the ingredients in it, and folds it up like a pro.

The Croque Monsieur has ham in it, along with swiss cheese, Mornay sauce (which I don’t even know what that is, but I love it), and a small bit of mustard made with Stella Artois. It was incredible. Not light at all, but not too much to fill you up. You can’t eat it with a fork, so you have to pick it up like a small burrito pocket. It gets a little messy towards the end, but you simply can’t stop eating it. It’s really quite tasty. I almost called off the entrée portion of food truck Wednesday after that. ALMOST.

While I was finishing up my crepe, I went to the next food truck – Taco Cielo. I had perused the menu when I walked past the first time, waiting for the rest of the group to get here. Then when I saw Skully had gotten the trio of tacos (one of each kind they make), that made up my mind for me. I ordered them and they arrived at the window very quickly. The tortillas basically have the meat on them and then you add your toppings at the little topping station – keeps people moving and lets you focus on the ingredients you want. There is a chicken (shredded) taco, a carnitas (shredded pork) taco, and an al pastor (BBQ pork) taco. I added some cilantro and pico de gallo to mine. I also grabbed some of the medium/hot salsa to spice them up a bit. The guy also put on a small jalapeno popper on my plate, I was thrilled to see. And it had bacon on it!

I started with the popper. It was surprisingly delicious. The jalapeno was sweet and was filled with cream cheese and covered in bacon bits. Really good, even when the burn of jalapeno kicked in. The al pastor taco was quite good. Really awesomely good and it made mw wish I had gotten three of them. The chicken taco was a bit bland and I almost went back for more hot salsa to give it some flavor. It wasn’t bad, just a bit underwhelming. The same went for the carnitas in my opinion. I liked the flavor, but wish there was more of it and more moisture.

Overall, the lunch was delicious and I got good and full. You can’t go wrong with any of the crepes Marie Antoinette has, so just get a few of them. And my recommendation (take that for what it’s worth) is to either just get the order of three al pastor tacos, or get the trio and load up on the delicious salsa they have to put on them.

We ate over by the wonderful ladies of the Bacon Trolley. They’re really awesome folks and are funny and personable and even came out and threw away our empties when we were done eating. That alone makes me want to go back there and eat everything on the menu (the bacon on there MIGHT have some small part in that, as well).

http://www.tacocielo.com/