There is a fake taco truck bolted to the side of El Tapatio Restaurant on 23rd Street, open late, doing real work for the neighborhood. But there is also a door, and a dining room behind it, and this time we used it.
Half expected to be told to turn around. To be pointed firmly back toward the truck-shaped appendage, handed a foil brick through a little window, and sent back out into the Richmond afternoon. It did not happen. We were allowed to stay.
Inside, El Tapatio has made choices. Faux stone walls the color of old mustard, brick archways framing nothing in particular, a column wrapped floor to ceiling in twisted rope like a prop from a Mexican restaurant that appeared to someone in a dream.
Terracotta tile underfoot. Spanish-language news murmurs from a flatscreen mounted up in the corner, Edición Digital, while the afternoon light comes through windows that look directly back out at the fake taco truck you just escaped…