America's most wanted 🍽

Native Grill food truck may be just a year old, but it draws on centuries of technique with its Mayan-inspired, fresh Mexican approach

Native Grill’s colorful Chilaco Shrimp torta.

Taco trucks are like potholes around Colorado Springs: pretty much everywhere. Except potholes suck ass to hit, and tacos are generally awesome and one of culinary culture’s greatest gifts to humankind. So I guess my analogy kinda sucks ass too, but still, you get the point about the proliferation of taco trucks.

And with their quantity in mind — shout-out to some of the most authentic ones on the Southeast side, who’re more likely to serve you tripe, tongue and other gringo-challenging cuts — the question rightfully comes down to quality. The cliché would be to say the best bang for the buck, but price aside, to me it’s about overall flavor impact.

There’s vendors that have stood out in unique ways to me, like El Chapin, Tepex, El Poblano Mobile, and Moctezuma Mexican Grill, more recently. And to that list, I can now add Native Grill, which celebrates its first anniversary come May.

If you’ve sipped suds at Fossil Brewing Company on a Saturday this past year, you may have already sampled their prowess. That’s a steady gig for them, and they’ve also recently popped up at Storybook Brewing and Mash Mechanix. But they’re regularly situated — from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Tuesdays through Fridays (on which they stay open until 9 p.m.) — in a parking lot in front of House of Kars at 2444 E. Platte Ave. That’s in Knob Hill, right where East Boulder Street oddly intersects with busy East Platte Avenue at a severe angle which calls into question early city planning, but I digress.

Native Grill owner America Campbell.

The talented owner/chef behind the business is America Campbell, a Springs resident of 30 years, who tells me she’s “pursuing a passion” with this truck. Cooking has been a hobby prior, and she doesn’t hold any industry experience, which makes Native Grill’s excellence all the more impressive.

Campbell designed the truck’s logo (pictured at bottom) and layout with intention for lots of windows for an open-kitchen style that allows guests to see their food cooked. She says her menu is largely “what I’ve been cooking all these years” and it features flavors from all over Mexico, not a specific region. That said, she tells me she travels to Mexico (around Juarez, across the border from El Paso) quarterly to purchase ingredients. That includes seven varieties of dried chilies, cinnamon sticks, vanilla, and a special Mennonite cheese directly from a community there, which gets prominently utilized on her menu. It’s “buttery, and rich-tasting” she says of it, handing me a thick-shredded pinch in a tiny plastic ramekin. She’s not wrong; it’s mild but with a wild note, more vibrant than common commercial products.

She also buys a crema from the Mennonites. And she presses her own tortillas on board the truck. She’s proud of her from-scratch approach which leaves almost nothing that’s not completely fresh and made to-order. Her sauces/salsas are Mayan-style, she notes, and I’m super impressed by the bright punch that each offers.

An array of spiciness laid out at home for consumption.

There’s a blackened pineapple habanero for sweet vegetal heat; a phenomenal hibiscus morita pepper (my favorite) that’s smoky and faintly fruity and tart; an earthy-nutty peanut-chile de árbol; and milder, more acidic roasted tomatillo-serrano. Campbell also makes a house meat marinade with ancho, Anaheim, morita and Cascabella peppers.

I discover how all that plays out on the menu with an order of the Fantastic Four plate — not a comic book thing, but a mashup of Native Grill’s pastor, asada, quesabirria and Chilaco shrimp tacos. I add in an à la carte pollo taco to complete the full offerings. Roundly, all are great. The pastor pops with chopped pineapple bits and tender pork, while the chewy, zesty asada benefits from a cooling crema garnish to mitigate the heat of just how damn much salsa I pour on ‘cuz I’m quickly obsessed with it. No specific notes on the pollo other than nice grill flavor.

So let’s focus on the stars: first, the birria. Campbell tells me it’s a recipe/method that dates back around 1,500 years which she has adapted with minimal changes. She makes both beef (for the unadventurous gringos) and goat (hell yes!) renditions that start by steaming the meats for around 17 hours in banana leaves. For her style of consomé, she uses ample bones to draw out collagen, so much so that the broth congeals in fridge. It’s fragrant from Mexican cinnamon and vanilla, plus star anise balanced with underlying garlic and onion plus chilies and other seasonings like bay leaves. All that makes for a highly blissful dip and bite that’s memorable. Like, I want to go back now as I’m writing this to satisfy a sudden craving. (You can get three goat tacos for $14, which come garnished with the Mennonite cheese, cilantro and onion with the consomé in a side cup.)

Final note on these, there’s also a “drunken tacos” special where I try the birria rolled into taquitos and rested in a thin puddle of broth, with shredded lettuce, crema and queso garnish. It’s good, but I tasted the birria’s essence less, and the tortillas more, so just get the tacos on your first visit to sample the birria more purely.

The Fantastic Four taco plate for $16 features a quesabirria, Chilaco shrimp, asada and pastor taco.

Now about those Chilaco shrimp tacos; they’re epic in their own way, enough so that I’m inspired to return and order the filling as a torta instead of taco — this is common across the menu where most proteins can be made into an empanada or burrito as well.

I dropped a photo of the Chilaco torta as the lead image above, but I’m placing another here, from a different angle, just to show off more of the sexy presentation.

For this bite of yum-yum, the shrimp take a bath in a chipotle and white wine reduction to create a smoky, earthy contrast to the prawn’s soft seafoodiness. (Yep, not a word, but on occasion I make up my own ‘cuz that’s how I’d say it naturally.)

I highly recommend Campbell’s recommendation to me (which is to say, I second): liberally dousing this torta with her hibiscus morita sauce, which gifts layered smokiness. (Hey, that one’s actually a word, fairly employed.) The dish's garnish already includes black sesame seeds (typically a mole ingredient), cabbage and slices of beets, which add alluring color, cool (the palate) and lend a little of their own muddy earthiness. The bread may hail from Sam’s Club, but it’s well-selected and soft, chewy and nicely spongy even after a touch of toasting. Like the birria, this sandwich rates memorable enough to seek back out sometime soon.

Consider pairing it with a house agua fresca; the one available on my visits was a cucumber-mint flavor that was pleasantly not too-sweet while being sugary enough by style. The cucumber too cools the palate after excessive chile consumption (if you’re me) and refreshes. I’ll have to also return to try the cantaloupe, jamaica (hibiscus) and horchata. As good as Campbell’s sauces are, I imagine her drinks measure up too.

Owner America Campbell says she designed her own logo and the food truck layout, with an intentional array of windows so that customers can see the action, à la an open-kitchen concept.