Queso Monster

 

A Durham-based food truck, Queso Monster serves up Mexican fare including tacos, nachos, and quesadillas. An accompanying trailer, Elote monster, offers elote on the cob or in a bowl as well as lemonades.

 

Queso Monster and Elote Monster usually draw fairly long lines at events, and so when I happened upon them without an extensive queue at a food truck rodeo, I decided to give them a try. The menu offers a good deal of flexibility, boasting choices in proteins (traditional meats, shrimp, or veggies), spiciness levels, and styles. Unexpectedly, they also offered red/juicy and quesobirria quesadillas. The “elote” side of the business offers the titular street corn, with or without a dusting of tortilla or red hot chips. Lemonades range from single flavors such as peach or strawberry to multi-berry bonanzas, and a few are available as horchatas instead.

 

I ended up with a birria quesadilla, tortilla chip-dusted esquites (elote bowl), and a mojito lemonade. The folks running the trucks were friendly, and, even by food truck standards, very fast. The quesadilla, which included broth, chips, salsa, and, of course, queso, offered quite a bit of food for $14. Less justifiable was the $5.50 charged for a regular-sized lemonade.

 

The food was, by and large, satisfying. The quesadilla offered tender meat and a tasty — if cilantro-heavy — broth. The tortillas were a bit greasy, however, and will have you missing La Sinaloense’s version. The torti esquites were thoroughly addictive. It may be just corn, sour cream and spices, but damn if the execution wasn’t spot-on. The confusingly-named mojito lemonade had about as much in common with a mojito as a sea horse does with a stallion, but aside from being very sweet, it was still a refreshing drink on a June day. I appreciated the amount of fresh fruit (berries, pineapple, and kiwi) included.

 

Had I been standing in long lines eagerly anticipating what awaited me, I likely would have walked away from Queso Monster and Elote Monster slightly disappointed. But thanks to fortuitous timing, I was able to enjoy it for what it was: good though not flawless Mexican food and drink.