Taqueria y Mariscos La Frontera

I want to love this place! It’s cheap, authentic, has super friendly people. The most recent time though the quality of the chicken on the tacos was not so good. My wife and I wondered if it was canned meat even… I don’t know… we have been other times and it was excellent, but this last time not so much. I would pay more for a taco if I know the meat was from a local organic farmer and butchered in the Market behind the taco stand.

I’m really concerned about our favorite local taco truck.
We have frequented this truck often for about the last year and a half or so, and every time the food is flavorful, inexpensive, hot, and fresh. It’s been about a month since our last visit, but yesterday we decided to pick up our usual order.
Wow. This was like night and day from what we’re used to.
The grocery store that is next to the truck has been renamed with a new sign, which we didn’t think much of, but the truck itself has also been repainted. Oh, cool, just a little renovation and improvement, right? Well, now I’m not sure. I hope it’s just that, and not a complete change in ownership and management.
The hostess who usually takes our order was still there, so there was at least one familiar face, but the cook yesterday had to be a new guy.
I ordered a barbacoa plate, two asada tacos, and a Jamaica agua fresca, and my boyfriend ordered two asada gorditas, all to-​go. Usually this is an incredibly filling amount of food that gives us each delicious leftovers for the next day.
For example, the barbacoa plate usually comes with a generous serving of meat, six corn tortillas, rice, beans, grilled onions, pico de gallo, lettuce, lime wedges, and a grilled pepper. It’s an amazing amount of food, and I usually eat half one night and the other half for lunch the next day.
Unfortunately:
— The usual green chile and red chile sauces that we always receive with our orders were forgotten. Ouch! This was really disappointing, as these sauces are one of the staples of these dishes for us (and we religiously use up every bit of leftover sauce on eggs, chili, and the like).
— I received no corn tortillas with my barbacoa plate.
— The usually incredibly delicious «pico de gallo» (so good that I often get an extra side of it) was really just a rough salad of some chopped tomato, some onion, a couple of pieces of pepper, and some lime juice. The tomato had been chopped up so large that none of the flavors had been able to meld together, and the tomato itself tasted as though all of the flavor had been refrigerated out of it.
— The barbacoa was the greasiest barbacoa I’ve ever had, and with very little flavor at all. This was doubly disappointing since we hadn’t received the chile sauces, which could have improved this problem. The barbacoa is usually very tender with a rich, slightly spicy flavor. This was like a watery pot roast.
— The side of rice with the barbacoa plate was also very different. Usually it has some spices and little bits of vegetable, such as carrots and peas. Yet this was just a side of white rice with a little chopped pepper in it. Very dry and very bland.
— The serving of beans was only about a tablespoon-​full and they were overcooked and dry. Meanwhile I had about a cup of lettuce on my plate. Yay. Lettuce.
— A really weird, small thing, but the limes, which are usually sliced into standard wedges, were cut into small, firm chunks, making them almost impossible to squeeze over the food. Who does that?!
I was actually able to finish the entire plate since so many of the usual elements were either skimped on, left off, or without much flavor.
Fortunately, the tacos asada were incredible, as always, so at least there was that. They didn’t suffer the lack of chile sauces, and I wished I had just ordered a plate full of tacos. Sadly, my boyfriend said that his gorditas were also disappointing, with far less filling and flavor than usual.
Also, usually this place has been extremely clean, but I noticed yesterday that there are now two trash cans located just outside the front doors to the grocery. Maybe they’ve always been there and we just now noticed them because it was a particularly hot day yesterday, but they’re pretty much right next to the seating area where people who do choose to get their orders for the patio restaurant would sit. The cans were swarming with flies and the smell was awful. I didn’t think too much about it since we weren’t going to be eating our food there, but I actually kept smelling the garbage smell for most of the trip home. Really unpleasant and unfortunate (especially since the truck itself has always had such high health scores).
Finally, one last, very nitpicky thing, but the foil on the barbacoa plate wasn’t sealed down, so it leaked all over my lap and the truck seat. It’s not a big deal, but we’ve never had this happen before, so I wasn’t expecting to be bathed in barbacoa juice.
I’m really, really hoping that this was just an off-​day for an otherwise fantastic taco truck, so we’ll certainly give this location another chance (though I’m not sure I want to order my usual favorite barbacoa plate again, given that it’s a pricier menu option and was such a letdown). I’m afraid that if our next trip proves as disappointing as this one, though, and if the new chef is a permanent installment, we may have to try one of the other trucks in the area.