Like many Mexican street-food vendors, Tia Julia does serve tacos, but on your first visit to the truck you may pore over the hand-lettered menu before noticing the small selection.
Instead your eyes might rest on the lesser-seen tlacoyo, which resembles an unsealed, pan-fried turnover stuffed with beans (first two photos below; $2.50), or meat and potatoes, and dressed with sour cream, hot sauce, and grated cheese.
It's filling, yet dwarfed by the torta and the cemita, sandwiches that are the mainstay of the truck's business. Either may be built on a milanesa of beef or chicken that's pounded thin, breaded, and deep-fried, accompanied by sliced avocado and — "Picante, amigo?" — an optional dose of pickled peppers. At Tia Julia, the surest way to distinguish the cemita is the shredded white cheese heaped higher than the roll is wide, until the sandwich is compression-wrapped for travel. Shown below: the milanesa de res torta ($5.50), with a biteaway view of beef, and a cemita de pollo ($7) in which the chicken is buried under cheese and half an avocado.
The one taco I've tried at Tia Julia seems to be a regularly offered "special," topped with rice and a cold hardboiled egg sliced in two ($2); if there's a story about how such a thing came to be, I'm all ears. Also shown: the truck's Direct TV dish, which feeds a small screen just inside the window for Spanish-language programming while you wait.
Tia Julia
Parked on Benham St. just south of Roosevelt Ave., Elmhurst, Queens
917-757-1633
11:00-10:00; closed Thursday
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