In the weeks leading up to Dish Fest, we’re presenting our readers with exclusive chef interviews so they can learn the stories behind the Best Dishes being served at the third annual food festival.
Lucas Gonzales grew up in Kearny, Arizona, surrounded by a large extended family who enjoyed cooking and sharing recipes. He has fond memories of family weekends when his parents and both sets of grandparents would gather and cook fresh flour tortillas under mesquite wood. Today, Gonzales operates the Salsa Bites food truck in the Valley, whipping up all those family favorites. This will be his third year at Dish Fest.
What will you be serving at Dish Fest?
We’re making barbacoa tacos, freshly made flour tortillas with butter and red chile chicken tamales. Everything that we do is made from scratch, from family recipes. The barbacoa recipe comes from my grandfather and it has been in our family for three generations now. The red chile chicken tamales are my grandma’s recipe that she passed on to my mom. We make our own fresh red sauce to go with the tamale and we use fresh corn masa and stuff them with the red chile chicken and a strip of potato, a strip of carrot and a strip of pickled jalapeno. They are delicious.
How did you learn the family recipes?
I learned from my mom. She taught me everything and my mom learned from my grandma and I have aunts from both sides of the family who have given me information. It’s so cool making all this food knowing that it came from them. I’m so grateful, too. I started this business five years ago and since then, it’s been a crash course on everything my family has ever done food-wise.
What are you most looking forward to about Dish Fest?
Getting to talk to people and explain the history of where the food came from. This year, we’re going to be inside the venue, not outside in the truck. That will be a different, new experience for me, getting out of the truck and being in front of everybody. I’m really looking forward to it.
What would you like people to know about Salsa Bites?
Everybody thinks that we’re just a taco truck. In all honesty, when we first started, we only had one taco on our menu. We have a variety of other entrees from empanadas with picadillo to Sonoran enchiladas. There aren’t many food trucks doing as many entrees as we do. Are we a restaurant? That’s always the goal for us because our menu is built that way.
