Seattlest and The Stranger have had disagreements of opinion concerning the quality or fucking lack of quality at certain Seattle taco trucks. In this week's print Stranger, though, there is a statement of fact regarding the highly-hyped tamales at the Rancho Bravo truck in Wallingford that cannot be disputed, and should be highlighted: They never have tamales at Rancho Bravo. Seattlest has taken to ordering them defensively, hopefully, and as an add-on but never the focal point of a meal. "Oh, and, excuse me, Ms., but have you any...tamales?" In the ordering window the woman's eyes soften and she seems to say, "It's very flattering that you would ask. You obviously hold them in high regard, and they are delicious. How disappointing for you, though. We do not have any tamales." What she actually says is, "Sorry, no." We're this close to calling in and pre-ordering a dozen of them like the sign on the truck invites us to do, eating one of them, and then selling the other eleven for a few bucks each to people waiting in line to order from the truck.

We also came across a taco truck that was actually a taco bus recently and skipped the tamales altogether in favor of what turned out to be pretty average tacos, but we'll definitely be back there at some point. This Shoreline taco bus is an island of edible locked in a sea of normally-I-would-never-consider-this-but-all-the-way-up-here-the-usual-laws-of-conduct-are-out-the-window (meaning it's in a parking lot next to a McDonalds and across the street from Taco Bell, on Aurora at some three-digit cross street that we can't quite remember). It's easily identifiable from Aurora, on the left if you're heading North, and looking like a school bus that's been reborn as Mexican transit. It's kind of a trick to climb the stairs into the bus--apparently the young children the bus was designed for are pretty agile and have no problem with 24" winding steps--but once inside you'll see the rear half of the bus has been made into a kitchen and the front half is dedicated to small stools facing the windows. Again, they aren't the greatest tacos ever, but it's a fun setting and handy when you find yourself hungry and out of your element in the midst of a Far-North Aurora mission.