Mariscos Los Willy's

Shout out to Dale, who has mentioned Mariscos Los Willy's to me several times, and just this week I finally wrote it down on a Post-It note. I took that note to our Yelp Burger Brigade dinner where I told Matt M. all about it.

Find this Truck and Feast on Mexican Seafood

Matt was as quickly enamored with this place as Dale (who originally discovered it by scooter happenstance - i.e. Food Fate) and has been back twice in as many days. I think he also has plans to go again today... But this place is still very much a secret.

Last night, I finally made it down with some of the usual suspects and somehow ended up out of my element in a whole new delicious world. It pays off big time to go rogue sometimes.

This place isn't searchable on Yelp (yet, though Matt has since added it), has a personal Facebook page (but no company page), isn't on Urbanspoon (yet, I just added it) and is pretty much totally absent on Google.

The most interesting tidbits from the flyer above read something like this (thanks Google translate and my shaky recollection of 5 years of Spanish):

#1 for Seafood Omaha - Shrimp Aguachile specialists - 100% Sinaloa-style seafood
Fish Tacos: Wednesday buy 3 and get the 4th free!
Hours: Wednesday to Monday 9:30 am - 9pm.
Located at: 3216 Q Street, Omaha, NE 68107

Lesson learned though, ordering something just because it's on special from a food truck where the menu is not in English may not be something I should gravitate to - at least before Googling some things first.

Quiz time... how many words on this menu do you know?

Truck Menu Board

I was about at 12 upon arrival. Luckily I'm not intimidated enough to NOT order or eat food from a truck where I only understand 54% of the menu and can't easily communicate with the person taking orders. Then I proceeded to eat what looked like raw shrimp and scallops.

Living on the wild side in Omaha!

The special in question was the Aguachiles. At $15.00 it seemed like something that HAD to be tried. A $15 food cart menu item? We had to find out what it was...

Turns out it was this: 

Aguachiles

Raw shrimp (and later, scallops), brined and cured in a concoction of lime juice with peppers and spices, served with onions and cucumbers. A quick Google search would have revealed that easily.

And, for the record, it wasn't 'technically' raw... the citric acid in the juice "cooks" the fish, without changing its “raw” taste. Though reading this article, turns out it's not really foolproof either. So... yeah. Anyway, it looked raw. Tasted good though. 

That wasn't really my favorite dish (though according to the flier this is their expertise). In any case, our group wasn't really hesitant about digging in.

The other items we sampled knocked it out of the park though. 

Like the Tostadas Mixtas: a tostada loaded up with amazing cerviche including shrimp, fish, octopus, and probably other sea-dwelling animals; or the Pescado (fish) tacos. Also the Camaron (shrimp) tacos. Where are they getting this seafood, because it was all crazy delicious. And perfect for those hot summer days coming up where you don't feel like cooking.

There's seating outside with a covered tent, and plenty of festive music to go along with your meal. This will definitely be added to our restaurant rotation - and next time I'll come a bit more prepared, though you have to be willing to go with the flow a bit here. 

Also, maybe this should go without saying, but it's CASH only folks. And brushing up on your espanol ahead of time will only help when it comes time to order. 

Tostadas Mixtas

Fish Tacos

Mariscos Los Willys on Yelp