In efforts to provide authentic Mexican cuisine to Montgomery County, a Silver Spring based food truck will open a brick-and-mortar in Kensington.
The Tacos Don Perez food truck opened in February 2021 as a family-owned and operated business. The business will open next Spring at the former site of K-Town Bistro in Kensington, said co-owner Brenda Perez-Arora. She runs the food truck with her parents, brother, husband and her two younger siblings help out with some tasks on the weekends, she said.
The upcoming Tacos Don Perez location, at 3784 Howard Ave., will have a quick service concept where customers can order food at the counter, wait for it to be ready and then take the food back to their table or to go, Perez-Arora said.
Perez-Arora, 25, said her family is originally from Mexico City, Mexico and moved to Montgomery County about 20 years ago. The business is a means to honor her grandfather.
“We named it Don Perez for my grandpa, so we kind of wanted to carry on his name,” she said. “Food is something we always bonded over, we always shared most of our best moments over food. Something good happens, we get together and we’re like, ‘hey, let’s do a carne asada.’”
With the business, the family wants to share that love in their Mexican cuisine with the community.
“We just love that we can kind of bring together people that are searching for a piece of home to our spot,” Perez-Arora said. “There’s a lot of people looking for things that remind them of their own culture, so for us, to be able to share that back with the community, it means a lot to us.”
Some staple menu items Tacos Don Perez offers includes birria tacos; pazole, a hominy corn soup, and pambazo, a chorizo filled sandwich.
Perez-Arora said their menu offers authentic Mexican cuisine with options that you can’t really find elsewhere.
“We try to keep the menu varied so that everybody can find something that they liked, whether you are into grasshopper tacos or you just want to enjoy a taco,” she said. “We have a little bit of everything here.”
Perez-Arora said grasshopper is something her grandfather used to cook for her when she was younger. It’s a common thing to eat in Oaxaca, Mexico, where her mother is from, she said.
Even though the business will open a brick-and-mortar location, Perez-Arora said the family still plans to operate the food truck on a limited basis. The Tacos Don Perez food truck, is usually parked in the Glenmont Shopping Center 11:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.
As the business prepares to open its permanent location, continuing to expand is something that Perez-Arora said is still a goal.
“We would like to open more locations in the Montgomery County area since this is home, this is where we came, this is where we’ve lived for the past 20 years,” she said. “So, we want to focus on expanding in Montgomery County and then, hopefully, going all around the East Coast and then growing from there.”