Burrito Trail
When you think you’ve seen it all, you walk into a 23rd Street Taqueria and get blown away. Tacos El Rulas’ new space is nothing short of amazing.
It is a monument — a behemoth built inside what feels like a repurposed airplane hangar. It has concrete floors, towering ceilings, huge murals, loud music, a field of tables and chairs, and a stage. We heard the city is negotiating to bring live music to the venue.
It’s surreal. Otherworldly. Like a dream someone had about a taco truck that grew so popular it had to move into an aircraft carrier. And that is kind of what happened.
Tacos El Rulas started as a food truck. It grew a cult following, became a late-night destination, and is now parked outside a space that feels like it was never meant to hold food at all. It doesn’t feel like a restaurant. It feels like a warehouse that started throwing parties and never stopped. Nothing about it is ordinary. The size. The layout. The energy. It is almost too much until it isn’t.
We spotted the huge loaded potatoes and giant burritos El Rulas serves up on Instagram and read a few reviews about their giant tortas but were never sure what to make of it. On Yelp, Tacos El Rulas only manages a measly 2.5 stars.
Richmond’s New Late-Night Taqueria Goes Big
Tacos El Rulas serves the East Bay’s largest tortas and most decadent loaded baked potatoes.
Luke Tsai
El Rulas offers a wide-ranging menu that blends traditional Mexican street food with seafood and sushi options. Tacos are priced at $4 and include fillings such as tripa, birria, suadero, chuleta, and more. Burritos range from $13 to $25, with options like ribeye, camarón, California and chile relleno. The menu also features huaraches, mulitas, quesabirrias, and sopes, as well as loaded fries topped with shrimp, ribeye, or garlic.
Seafood dishes include camarones prepared in various styles, such as a la diabla, al mojo de ajo and empanizado. Along with mixed seafood, molcajetes priced up to $39. Sushi rolls, including the Mar y Tierra and Hot Cheetos Roll, range from $17 to $19.99. Aguachiles come in several varieties, including verde, pulpo, and mango habanero.
Everything looked tasty, but we prefer to eat our food in tube form. We ordered the Burrito California. It is like a real burrito, but instead of rice and beans, the wrap artists use French fries, which makes it feel a little too San Diego for us.
There is no rice. No beans. Just golden fries, soft and savory, soaking up the juices of dark, smoky carne asada. The steak is deeply seasoned and seared until the edges verge on crispy. Guacamole and sour cream add that creamy richness that makes burritos so fulfilling. For those keeping count, this is three straight weeks of guacamole on our 23rd Street Burritos.
El Rulas boasts a solid salsa bar that elevates its offerings with a vibrant variety of flavors and heat levels. The lineup includes a Salsa Verde, an orange emulsified, and a fiery Chile de Arbol salsa that delivers a clean, lingering heat. Our favorite was the Salsa Roja with bits of blackened pepper, adding a bit of char, and what tasted like fresh jalapeño.
We enjoyed splashes of salsa on the burrito, letting the peppery goodness mix with the juicy carne asada and sour cream and coat the papas. It was good and only cost $16.41. But now that we’ve tried French fries on a burrito we are ready to proclaim French fries do not belong on a burrito. Potatoes just give off too much Breakfast Burrito vibe, and we began to really miss the rice and beans by the time we closed out our 746-gram burrito.
El Rulas has built an amazing cathedral to Mexican food and culture on a lonely stretch of 23rd Street, and everyone should check it out. The food is good too.
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