No. 5: Look out for Tacos Hernandez Food Truck's northern Mexican cuisine in Detroit

For bringing a new perspective of Mexican cuisine to metro Detroit, Tacos Hernandez Food Truck lands at No. 5 on the 2024 Detroit Free Press/Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers Top 10 New Restaurants & Dining Experiences list.

When Diana Gomez relocated to Detroit in 2016, her palate was missing the smoky flavors and white corn tortillas that shaped her understanding of Mexican cuisine.

The El Paso, Texas, native with familial ties to Chihuahua, Mexico, had become accustomed to spicy chilis that developed their heat under the stress of the hot desert sun and the range of beef cuts provided by Texas’ cattle country.

In Detroit, she learned, a dominant influence from Jalisco, Mexico, and other coastal states lends to salsas that are more umami, flavored with pungent vinegars, and taco shells formed from gritty yellow corn masa.

As she investigated the nuances that separated her own traditions from the dishes she was eating in southwest Detroit, Gomez discovered the depth and diversity of Mexican cuisine.

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“I started obsessing over the fact that we’re all different,” she said. “Just like in the U.S., where food in the South is different than in Southwest and food in California is different from food in the Midwest, that’s exactly how it is in Mexico. We’re all from different regions with different influences.”

Soon, Gomez set out to widen the scope of Mexican flavors in Detroit with the same tacos she grew up eating in El Paso, which draw influences from New Mexico in the States and northern Mexico across the border. In 2018, she began selling flour tortillas and salsas and later hosted occasional pop-ups to raise money for what would become Tacos Hernandez, an homage to her maternal family name. Last year, she revved up the engine on a 2003 Chevy Chassis, painted it in vibrant yellow sunrays and terracotta hues of scorched desert earth and hit the road to preach the gospel of northern Mexican cuisine.

During her travels throughout the city, Gomez began offering Midwestern clientele a lesson in norteño cooking. No, she will not serve you a birria taco — “You don’t want me to make birria because I don’t know how to make birria,” she explained. But she will serve an equally delicious taco filled with tender shreds of juicy brisket flavored with little more than smoke and salt.

No, she will not serve you a side of sour cream, but if you require a creamy additive to quell the pinch on your tongue after a bite of a fiery jalapeño seed, she will hand over a mild avocado crema that’ll do the job without masking the warm notes of the grilled chicken or the naturally sweet nectar of cooked cabbage.

Yes, she will serve you a burrito, but don’t expect the California-style variety of Chipotle acclaim overstuffed with rice, beans and whatever fillers you desire. Instead, Gomez will ladle a slow-cooked stew of brisket, melt-in-your-mouth potatoes and chiles pasado as dark and smoky as aged mole over a soft, handmade tortilla.

“It’s about educating our customers and teaching them that it’s still Mexican food, but it’s just a little bit different than what you’re used to,” Gomez said.

Despite the transient nature of a mobile truck, Gomez is putting down roots on Detroit’s east side. Vines in her backyard in Detroit’s Morningside neighborhood are fruiting with hundreds of tomatoes that are blended for fresh salsas and an array of peppers that will be roasted and preserved for later use.

“The most fun part about living in Michigan is how giving the land can be during the harvest season,” she said.

A new partnership with Crane Street Garden, a nonprofit farm that spans nine vacant lots in the Airport Subdivision, will allow Gomez to grow the corn used to make nixtamal tortillas, taking the concept of handmade to the next level.

“From the first bite, I knew that Diana was cooking up something special,” said Crane Street co-founder Rachel Nahan, who also lived in Texas for a stint. “Her tacos immediately brought me back to my days in Texas, of smoked brisket, hand-pressed corn tortillas and little side cups of red and green and yellow salsas. I just had to let her know I was obsessed with her food.”

Over the next growing season, Gomez and Nahan, will run a pilot program that tests the success rate of a field of corn on the city’s east side.

“Diana sourced a few salsa ingredients from Crane Street, and as we chatted more about food and cooking, she explained to me what nixtamalization was, and how she wanted to process corn into her own masa," Nahan said. "We came up with this corn collaboration to connect ourselves to the order of planting, harvesting, nixtamalizing and cooking maize — and I am excited for all the learnings (and tacos) this summer is going to bring.”

The Crane Street Garden collaboration is an ode to Gomez’s maternal grandmother, mother and 13 aunts and uncles who grew, harvested, dried and nixtamalized white corn in Mexico.

“I can’t let that die,” she said.

“... We’re experimenting with two different types of corn — the norteño white corn and something local," Gomez said. "We know corn takes time so we’re doing the math of how much we’re going to need for tortillas to make this project successful.

In her effort to resuscitate an ancestral practice, Gomez has interviewed and recorded family members to learn the art herself.

“I want to honor them," she said. "I want to bring that to Detroit and serve those tortillas that fed families for so long. I have to give it life because my Grandma did it. I’ve never met my Grandma, but I feel that she’s proud and I feel that she’s pushing me.”

As a Morningside resident, Gomez has become an active supporter of the E. Warren Development Corp. and a vendor at the organization’s summer farmers market.

“I'm going to be an anchor business at the farmers market this year, so that'll be our home base,” she said. “I'm really excited about that project because I'll be able to be more connected to the community through that space.”

This summer, Gomez will once again sell stacks of her handmade white corn tortillas and peppery salsas as she did when she first got her start. Developing a rapport with customers in her own neighborhood — introducing them to the flavors of norteño cuisine and learning their own wants and needs — will prepare her for the day Tacos Hernandez makes its brick-and-mortar debut.

In the next five years, Gomez sees herself opening a small east-side taco shop filled with the perfume of hot nixtamal tortillas and stewed meats that have simmered for hours.

“I’m not in this to make all the money in the world,” she said. “I’m in this for what makes me happy, which is the joy of seeing someone eat my food.”

Tacos Hernandez Food Truck

Follow Gomez on Instagram @tacoshernandezfoodtruck.

Ticket sales for the upcoming Detroit Free Press/Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers Top 10 Takeover dinner series benefit Forgotten Harvest, an Oak Park-based nonprofit committed to fighting food insecurity in the Detroit area. Dates for the 2024 dinner series will be announced later this month. Visit freep.com/top10 for updates on the events. For a chance to win $500 to dine at five restaurants on the 2024 Detroit Free Press/Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers Restaurant of the Year and Top 10 New Restaurants & Dining Experiences list, visit freep.com/roycontest24. Contest ends March 11 at 11:59 p.m.

Disclosure: Dining and Restaurant Critic Lyndsay C. Green is a founding board member at Crane Street Garden.