When a pair of former Tucsonans opened their Sonoran hot dog truck in Austin, few people there knew what the Old Pueblo delicacy was. Today, it's an award-winning business.
Cathalena E. Burch AUSTIN, Texas — If you're from Texas and you ask Miguel Kaiser the meaning behind the name of his T-Loc's food truck, he'll smile and tell it stands for"Texas Local."You'll know once you see the ubiquitous University of Arizona block"A" sticker on the back door of the trailer, right above the University of Texas Longhorns insignia, and the Ben's Bells"Be kind" clover stickers adorning the windows: Tucson Local.
Kaiser grew up eating Sonoran hot dogs during the chunks of his childhood spent in Tucson, which was the first to bring the Hermosillo-born Sonoran dog over the border in the early 1990s. The hot dogs are a Tucson staple that has since made its way to Phoenix and a couple California cities. Kaiser attended the Scottsdale Culinary Institute and landed an internship in Thomas Keller's storied New York restaurant Per Se. When he returned home to Tucson, he worked in the kitchens of several resorts before meeting Nataren, who also worked in resort restaurants."The goal was Sonoran hot dogs," Kaiser said. “My mom was like, 'Wait, you're going to leave your job to do hot dogs?' Yep.
It would take them a year of working two jobs and scrimping and saving before the pair was able to buy a food trailer. It took another six months to renovate the trailer and install the kitchen before they were able to open in 2014. It was named the best burrito in Texas in 2019 by Insider, which gave Arizona's honor to Tucson's own Barista del Barrio. This year, Yelp chimed in on the burrito question, naming T-Loc's the top burro in Texas; Barista del Barrio got the Arizona nod.
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