“Here, smell that,” says Eddie Moran, handing over a small wad of tortilla dough. “It smells like corn!”

It does. But in a deep, satisfying way. The little ball, soft and pliable, smells like the primal essence of corn. If you could eat that smell, you would.

Right now, though, you can’t get a tortilla made from that dough at Lalo’s, the taqueria on the Lebanon Mall that Moran opened during the pandemic in the former Lebanon Diner space. That’s because for years, he’s made his tortillas from Maseca, the ubiquitous corn flour you can find in taquerias all over the hemisphere. He goes through about 20 pounds of it a week.

Eddie Moran

The day before, though, Moran had gone to South Royalton to spend some time with Nando Jaramillo, who—through his Moon and Stars arepa cart and its related Arepa Project—is aiming to revive the use of heirloom corn in traditional foods made in the region. He grows it on plots leased from Cedar Circle Farm in E. Thetford, and mills it in SoRo. And it’s fair to say that he’s got a convert in Eddie Moran.

“That Maseca… I feel really uncool selling what I consider the styrofoam of corn meal,” Moran says. “I want to make our food even better—I work really hard to keep it fresh, but I think we can get it even better by sourcing locally and buying locally.” He fingers the dough. “Look at this! People don’t even know about this stuff, and it would be great to make it accessible to people. This is like ancient stuff—this is Aztec stuff. Why have we gone away from food like this?”

Part of the reason is price. Using the good stuff will mean raising prices a bit, and ever since Moran became a fixture years ago on the food-truck side of Colburn Park with his green Taco’s Tacos cart, he’s trained locals to expect a freshly made taco with fresh ingredients for a few dollars.

Ariana Moran and Nolan Harris prep for the lunch rush

He’s been in the food business a long time. His parents own and run Gusanoz, where for years Eddie helped out—and, when he was running the food truck, where he’d take over the kitchen late at night, once Gusanoz finished up, so he could prep for the following day’s Tacos Tacos business. Exhausted by that routine, he spent a year working for a contractor that runs the food service at private schools. But, as he puts it, “being my own boss is nice.” So when the corner spot on the Leb Mall opened up, he took it.

And though space isn’t quite at the premium that it was in the truck—among other things, he’s replaced the ovens so that he and his helpers can prep for the lunch rush in a few hours, rather than coming in at 5 to get things going—it’s not all that different. “In essence, the food truck system is a conveyor belt system,” he says. “And that little spot over there”—he points at the prep space—”is pretty much the trailer. Everything is in order, it’s got a nice little structure, and it’s small enough to be able to implement that system here.”

Though he keeps the menu small—”I try to keep it food-truck size,” he says—fresh ingredients show up all the time. But for Moran, his go-to meal almost never changes: “A tortilla, a little spread of quac—just a little spread, people put too much on their tacos—and then pork, queso and cilantro and some habanero salsa. That is literally what I eat almost every day, at least two a day.”

As for those locally sourced ingredients, some day he’d like to expand what Lalo’s uses. But for now, he’s going to focus on corn meal. “Price is a big issue,” he says. “But to start, I’m going to figure out the tortillas at least. We just have to make sure we can make it work for everybody.”

— by Rob Gurwitt