Mexi Eats and Thumping Beats

On our recent trip up to Canada to visit with my sibling, we had a chance to head over to the London Taco Fest, a three-day festival with a bunch of food trucks serving tacos (and other Mexican, and Mexican-adjacent, eats) along with alcohol, other vendors, and lots of music. The whole experience was pretty fun. We enjoyed walking around, listening to the thumping beats from a couple of the booths, as well as the big stage set up at the end, and while we didn’t stick around long enough to watch everything (we missed the Luchador wrestling), it was still a fun experience.

Although, of course, the primary thing we were there for was the food, and as has become something of a tradition, when I go to a food fest I have to review everything I ate. The experience is fun, but the review is what I live for. I may be addicted to reviewing things. Self-reflection aside, here’s everything we ate as we traveled along the fest:

Born 2 Eat

After walking all the way down the street to see all the trucks and what they were offering, we settled on one basic rule: if they used AI art for their booth, menus, or anything else, we skipped that food truck. My sibling, their husband, and I are all artists, and none of us are exactly fans of AI, so we all felt comfortable sticking to places that were willing to do their own work (or hire an artist to do so) instead of using shitty computer-generated menu-slop.

As such, the first of the trucks that we saw that fit the bill was Born 2 Eat, an “Authentic Mexican” food truck that mostly served fusion food. For this first stop on our walking tour we ordered the Jerk Chicken Tacos, and the Great Canadian Poutine. Neither of those, you will note, are authentically Mexican, immediately putting into question the tagline of the truck. But, at the same time, the food was excellent so we didn’t mind so much.

The Jerk Chicken Tacos were fantastic. Served with lightly sweet dressing and coleslaw, and then garnished with line and cilantro, the flavor for these was on point. Lightly spicy, tangy, and well seasoned, these had a very tasty salty-and-sweet vibe going on. The meat was super tender, the flavors popped, and I could have easily eaten two or three trays of these tacos instead of the one I got (as I shared the rest around). Had this been the only booth at the festival I still would have been happy.

My wife, meanwhile, really enjoyed her poutine, although it certainly stretched the definition of “poutine”. It had fries, smothered in stuff, that was true, and cheese and gravy were part of the mix, so I guess technically it was poutine. But it also included bacon and crispy fried chicken, was drizzled with mayo and orange sauce, and was topped with green onion. It was an absolute meal in a bucket. Very tasty, mind you, but it was a lot. The only quibble I had was that the gravy was very salty, and it made everything else saltier because of it. I could have probably done without the gravy but then would it have even been poutine at that point?

Los Vatos Margarita Bar

Generally speaking, I don’t drink. It’s not for any particular reason as I don’t have an addiction of any kind, I’ve just never really developed a desire for it. I have a high metabolism which makes it hard to get a light buzz, so I either have to drink to excess just to feel something, or I end up paying a lot (since alcohol isn’t cheap) to feel nothing. And since I also never really developed a taste for alcohol, all I’m doing is paying a lot to drink battery acid (as it tastes to me) for no fun at all.

The one exception, though, are fun and fruity drinks. I do like to get these, from time to time, when I’m in a social situation. Maybe once every three or four months I’ll get something when everyone else I know is ordering drinks. And when I saw the margarita booth at the taco fest, I felt like I could join in, especially because they had a bunch of fun flavors. I got the mango margarita (only because they didn’t have the mix in yet for the pineapple jalapeno, which was my first choice) and it was great.

The drink didn’t taste overly strong, although you could certainly feel the power of the tequila afterwards, showing just how smooth the Hornitos Tequila was. The mango mix was sweet and tangy. The spicy, salty rim added a nice punch to the drink. Overall this was a really good margarita that, if I ever drank more than one at a time, I probably would have gotten again. My sibling certainly did as after we finished off this drink they went and got a watermelon version (and then a second later on) which was also excellent.

La Michoacana Mexican Restaurant

Not a food truck but a full booth with grills set up, La Michoacana had a really solid menu with a good variety of items. What drew my eye, though, was the Quesabirria Combo. It was a trio of tacos, served fresh from the grille, stuffed with tender birria and melted cheese, served with a cup of consomme on the side. The smells coming from the booth were amazing, with the mix of cooking beef and smoky grille drawing me in, so I had to get the combo.

And it was excellent. The beef, as advertised, was super tender. It was well seasoned, salty and smoky, without a heavy bite to the beef. The consomme added richer notes and more salty and savory goodness. They were excellent, albeit drippy, tacos that were packed with flavor. This was another one where I could have sat with a full tray all on my own instead of sharing, and then probably gone back for seconds. The tacos slapped.

La Parrillada Grill & Latin Cuisine

While I was getting my tacos from La Michoacana ordered up, my sibling went over to La Parrillada to get another trio. For this one they ordered a three meat combo, with one taco each of beef, chicken, and shrimp. These came topped with corn and cilantro, plus a lime and consomme on the side for birria dipping. Plus, my sibling then added on some salsa they had for topping, although they picked the hot and, well, the hot was very, very hot. That was probably a mistake.

With that said, I don’t think anything really could have saved these tacos. They were flat, bland, and pretty dry, even with the consomme for dipping and all the corn salsa thrown on top. There wasn’t nearly enough flavor to the tacos, and the consomme was more grease than gravy. It tasted pretty bad in general. That, plus tortillas that simply couldn’t hold up to the wetness of the meat mix, led to a very poor eating experience. This was the first bad dish we got from the taco festival, and all of us agreed it wasn’t worth the nearly 20 bucks the booth charged for their food.

Cherry Hill Mexican Tacos

While I was off looking at other booths, my sibling ventured off the reservation and got something from a booth that used AI art (we all gave them a solid tut-tut for that). In fairness, they were two margaritas deep and just wanted more tacos, so I can’t really blame them. They got another taco trio, with beef, chicken, and carnitas, also with consomme on the side. And, honestly, I think we all should have stopped while we were ahead.

Although different from La Parrillada, in no small part because they weren’t slathered in ultra-spicy salsa, the tacos still weren’t great. I don’t tend to eat pork, because I simply don’t enjoy it, so I skipped the carnitas taco, but both the chicken and beef tacos were very dry despite having greasy consomme on the side and a ton of cheese on top. They lacked enough flavor, and the consomme was just gross. Clearly not all birria is made equal, as these last two booths proved.

At this point we’d already had enough bad tacos, and there weren’t that many other places that didn’t use AI art, so we moved on to dessert before deciding to end our stay at the festival.

Choco Churros

I am not generally a churros fan. While I get the appeal of them – crispy fried tubes of dough coated with sugar and such – the big issue I have with them is that the coating on churros usually has cinnamon in it. While I can tolerate cinnamon as a seasoning in the context of other flavors, like using it in fruit pies and the like, I don’t like cinnamon on its own. Churros are usually coated with cinnamon and sugar and that tends to keep me away from them. Similarly I also don’t eat elephant ears for the same reason. Fried dough is fun, but for me cinnamon is not.

My wife, however, loves churros. She used to get them all the time when she was working (on one of those student internship things) at Disney, and she’d wander around the park eating churros and riding rides. It’s nostalgia for her. When we saw a churros place at the fest (which makes sense since they are a part of Latin cuisine) she had to get some. And, as it turned out, these weren’t normal churros. These were Choco Churros.

The key difference here is that instead of cinnamon, which I don’t like, these things were coated just in sugar and then drizzled with chocolate sauce. And they were good. I mean, come on, it’s fried dough and chocolate. I don’t know how you could possibly screw that up. She and I shared on them to the point where we got sugared out, and then passed the rest off to my sibling and their husband, and we all got fat on fried dough. It was excellent.

Authentic Brazilian Acai Bowls

The final stop was for an acai bowl, specifically because my brother-in-law wanted one. He was lured in by the temptation of berry flavor with a bunch of toppings, and got a large to share with the group. And I’ll be honest, I actually have no clue what all he got in there. Some strawberry sauce, some sweetened condensed milk, a bunch of granola, grains, and nuts. They let you put a whole host of toppings in and he did not hold back. It was a total mess.

But it was very tasty. Having not had just acai berries before, I didn’t realize how much they taste like blueberries. The basic berry mix was really tasty, and all the crap mixed in added a bunch of textures and flavors and… it’s hard to describe as more than a kind of granola slop bowl. That makes it sound bad, which it wasn’t. But the large was massive and even with four of us eating around the thing it was still hard to finish. We all left very full of berries and flavor, which I guess was a win from a certain perspective. I’d probably be willing to get something like this again… just in a small size next time.

Final Thoughts

In general I think the festival was pretty decent. Many of the booths sucked, but the few food stalls that were good were amazingly so. If we’d wanted to stick around most of the night, drinking margaritas, listening to a thumping, club soundtrack, and watching wrestling, then I know which booths I would have gone back to and I’m sure I would have had a great time. There was enough there worth doing that I would call the 2026 edition of the London Taco Fest a success. You just have to go in with the right mindset to really have a good time.