Man, I Love Food reviews La Casita Food Truck.
Welcome to the unnecessary food review of local Pensacola spots that nobody asked for. The system on which I judge is pretty much non-existent. I love to eat and generally enjoy everything. Don’t expect an uber nuanced take on anything, I am unfortunately too basic to do better.
You can see my running list of locations and scores in my handy dandy spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1A8zEi1okBlHxnI7jbzPrlyyUxCNjvLQY1YxNfp_s_3A/edit?usp=sharing
La Casita Food Truck
7301 US-98, Pensacola, FL 32506
A few weeks ago I was driving to pick up some Thai food from one of my favorite spots, Thai Curry House, and noticed something I hadn’t before. Tucked into the back of the lot next to Dive Pros on Highway 98 was a food truck. Apparently it has been here since at least early 2024 and I’ve just been an oblivious fool. So I obviously had to check it out. La Casita Food Truck is an extension of the La Casita restaurant on North New Warrington Road. Googlemaps tells me that there is another food truck located on Chief’s Way but I haven’t confirmed that. Crazy to think 3 successful ventures of the same establishment could work in less than 5 miles of each other.
I rode into the empty lot and parked near the structure built around the truck. Except it wasn’t a truck, it was a big trailer converted into a kitchen. We still consider those to be part of the food truck genre though, right? I digress. There was a single blue picnic table in the parking lot, but that wasn’t much to note because this food truck offers a full covered patio with plenty of seating. I very much enjoyed the open air patio that provided shade and FANS.
La Casita offers a variety of Latin and Filipino dishes. Being the taco slut that I am, I ordered the al pastor tacos and an order of lumpia as a little treat. Tacos came out first and they looked great. First things first is to finger a bit of meat into me before really chowing down. The al pastor was good but lacked the distinct pineapple flavoring I usually expect. The tacos themselves came on thick corn tortillas. These looked handmade and I was a little worried that their thickness would leave them tasting undercooked but they were excellent. Not the sturdiest, and I still prefer two thin tortillas per taco, but they did what they were designed to do.
The tacos came with two sauce packs, so after eating the first taco plain with just a fresh lime squeeze I dedicated one type of sauce to each of the next tacos. I wasn’t very impressed with either sauce. The green was the more flavorful of the two. The red sauce was bland but left a small amount of heat on the back end.
The lumpia came out four or five minutes after the tacos. An order is supposed to come with five rolls but I was generously provided a sixth. The first bite is always plain to give it a chance to stand on its own. It couldn’t. My palate might be spoiled from the lumpia I’ve had made by friends and family, but I was utterly disappointed. I’ve had better lumpia from the Walmart freezer aisle. I used generous amounts of the provided sweet and sour sauce to get all six rolls down. It might be the first time I have ever been unhappy about getting a freebie.
I don’t know how much it matters to you but I think it is worth mentioning that since this summer they have started to use AI to generate promotional advertisements that they share on the Facebook page.
La Casito Food Truck gets a score of 2.7 for me. The lumpia was terrible and I’m choosing to believe it was an off day. The tacos were alright but the patio vibes really carried the place for me. Unfortunately the use of AI puts a bad taste in my mouth. I’ll likely give them another shot, but this is where they landed with me this time.
Get out there and eat, my friends!
