The Bay Area has a very rich food truck scene.  Largely thanks to organized events like Off the Grid and Moveable Feast, trucks that could easily go overlooked have a place to meet and mingle and show off their culinary expertise on wheels.  One of the best trucks I’ve come across in exploring these options is Filipino-Mexican fusion experts Señor Sisig, whose expertly marinated meats and thoughtful ingredients earn their multiple trucks hour long lines wherever they go.  While they’re largely heralded for their expertly stuffed regular and California burritos, this time I opted to try my favorite way for consuming traditional Mexican food – the street taco.

Sisig is an aggressively seasoned Filipino dish that is usually made with the leftover or less desirable parts of the animal, like the head and liver, using the cuts of meat as a generic backdrop for a spicy and sweet marinade lead by chili peppers and calamansi (a tart citrus related to the kumquat).  Señor Sisig take the premise of the base seasoning and apply it to higher quality meat, like pork shoulder, chicken thigh, and for the vegetarians out there, tofu.

The Señor Sisig taco combines your choice of protein with a corn tortilla, onions, jalapeños, iceberg lettuce, and their signature cilantro cream sauce.  The pork taco is salty and sweet, with succulent slightly fatty pieces of shoulder that explode with robust flavor against the the spicy crispness of the jalapeños and onions.  There’s a beautiful char on the outside of the pork that feels fresh and slightly crunchy like the meat went straight from the grill onto the tortilla and into my mouth.

Eating this taco is very reminiscent of the most perfect al pastor, with its balance of sweet and heat being one of the most delicious things you could ever put inside of a tortilla.  The cilantro cream sauce reminds me a lot of Mexican crema – thinner and more runny than standard sour cream with a slight cilantro and limey kick that offsets and mellows the spice running throughout.

The chicken is a little bit leaner and sweeter, with a salty presence and significantly less heat; although you still get a good burst of spice from the ample diced jalapeño on top.  There is less char on the outside of the meat and the sweet/sour notes really sing on the firmer thigh meat.  While the pork taco didn’t need any modification at all, this one gets taken to new heights with the addition of the provided Sriracha sauce.  The heat and garlic that the sauce adds to the flavor makes up for the lack of depth that comes with the lower fat content and is deliciously spicy in a way that you never want to end.

Ratings:
Sisig Pork Taco: 10/10
Sisig Chicken Taco: 8.5/10