At Los Reyes Del Elote Asado, Teo and Teresa Herrera have spent nearly two decades serving the flavors they grew up with in Puebla—and building a family business that has become part of Santa Ana’s food story.
There are plenty of places in Santa Ana where you can get a good taco.
That alone isn’t what makes Los Reyes Del Elote Asado worth knowing.
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At the corner of Main Street and Chestnut Avenue, Teofanes “Teo” Herrera and his wife, Teresa Herrera, have spent nearly 20 years cooking the kind of food they know by heart: handmade tortillas, grilled elote, sopes, mole, tacos and other dishes rooted in the flavors of Puebla, Mexico.
Some might call Los Reyes a hidden gem.
But after this many years, “hidden” doesn’t quite tell the whole story.
This is a food truck built on a marriage, a family, years of restaurant experience and recipes connected to the food Teo and Teresa grew up eating. And while the grilled corn may get your attention first, there is considerably more happening behind the window.
It Started With the Corn
When Teo and Teresa opened Los Reyes Del Elote Asado in 2006, they wanted two things: a name people would remember and food that would give them a reason to come back.
So they chose a bold one.
Los Reyes — “The Kings.”
Then they put elote at the center of the identity.
The Herreras say roasted corn wasn’t something they saw others around Orange County specializing in when they started. They wanted to distinguish themselves with elote asado and esquite asado—corn grilled rather than simply boiled—and build a menu around the kind of “country food” they remembered growing up with.
Nearly two decades later, the corn still carries the name.
Los Reyes’ current menu offers both grilled and boiled elote and esquite, while the rest of the menu has expanded into tacos, burritos, sopes, huaraches, gorditas, quesadillas, mole dishes and more.
And customers still notice the corn.
Recent Yelp reviews highlighted by Travel Santa Ana repeatedly single out the elote alongside dishes like mole tacos, lengua and cabeza. One 2025 customer went as far as calling the elote con todo the best they had eaten, while another described pairing a shrimp burrito with a fully dressed grilled elote as an indulgent, messy-in-the-right-way meal.
But stopping at the elote would miss what makes the truck interesting.
The Handmade Tortillas Matter
Dig through customer reviews and another detail comes up again and again:
The tortillas are made by hand.
It sounds simple, but with tacos, the tortilla is half the experience.
Customers have praised them for years, including reviewers who specifically mention the tortillas alongside the tacos and grilled corn. One longtime Google reviewer described them as soft, buttery and carrying the kind of char associated with tortillas cooked at home.
That homemade approach lines up with how Teo and Teresa describe their own cooking.
They make their sauces themselves. Their recipes trace back to Puebla. Their mole began with a traditional Pueblano preparation before evolving into their own version. And much of what comes out of the truck is still prepared directly by Teo and Teresa.
The mole, in particular, has developed its own following.
It appears throughout the menu—not only as a plate of enchiladas, but in tacos, burritos, mulitas and huaraches—and reviewers repeatedly mention it independently from the grilled corn. A March 2026 Yelp reviewer praised the mole tacos alongside lengua, cabeza and elote, while another 2025 customer specifically called out both the mole and elote as standouts.
There’s also more here than the standard taco-truck lineup.
Los Reyes serves dishes like quesadillas filled with huitlacoche, the earthy corn fungus sometimes nicknamed the Mexican truffle, and flor de calabaza, or squash blossom. Recent Google reviewers have specifically praised both versions.
Then there are the sopes.
And that’s where the menu becomes personal.
The Dish That Tastes Most Like Childhood
Ask Teo and Teresa which dish means the most to them and the answer isn’t necessarily the elote that made it onto the sign.
It’s the sopes.
They both grew up eating sopes prepared with different toppings, and the way they serve them today connects directly to those childhood meals.
For Teresa, learning to make traditional dishes didn’t begin with culinary school or written recipes.
It began by watching her mother.
She remembers the kitchen as a sacred place in the family, where children learned by watching their mothers cook and feed everyone around them. Much of what Teresa knows came from those moments of observation.
That connection between food and family runs through almost everything about Los Reyes.
Including how Teo and Teresa became a family in the first place.
Before the Food Truck, There Was a McDonald’s in Maryland
Their story starts thousands of miles from the food truck.
And, unexpectedly, at a McDonald’s.
Teo had originally come to California in the mid-1990s before heading east to Maryland and Virginia as part of what he describes as an adventure.
While in Maryland, he stopped at a McDonald’s.
That’s where he saw Teresa.
She worked there.
Teo wanted to get to know her, so rather than simply hoping he would run into her again, he made a more committed move:
He applied for a job.
The two became coworkers, got to know each other, fell in love and began building a family together. Along the way, they discovered another connection: despite meeting thousands of miles away, both had grown up in Puebla, Mexico, in different towns located near one another.
They eventually spent about three years on the East Coast before returning to California to be closer to family—and, as they remember it, to get back to the warm weather.
For Teo, that also meant returning to the restaurant business.
It was familiar territory.
His entire career had been spent working in restaurants, and after coming back to California he took a restaurant management position while he and Teresa began carefully saving money.
They wanted something of their own.
Saving Until the Dream Became a Food Truck
Opening Los Reyes didn’t happen overnight.
Teo and Teresa saved.
They worked.
They made sacrifices.
And little by little, they put away enough money to start the business they had been imagining.
In 2006, Los Reyes Del Elote Asado was born.
The goal was never simply to sell tacos.
They wanted to serve the rich, comforting food they remembered from Puebla—the dishes they had grown up around—and create something distinct enough that people would remember the name and come back.
Over time, they did.
The Herreras say customers have visited them from Arizona, Hawaii, Texas and New York.
Online reviews spanning years tell a similar story of repeat customers and families returning to the truck. Reviewers frequently mention not just the food, but Teo and Teresa’s friendliness and the sense that Los Reyes is a place people make part of their routine rather than somewhere they visit once for a viral dish.
And through it all, Los Reyes remained a family operation.
The Thing They’re Most Proud of Isn’t on the Menu
Teo and Teresa have been married for roughly three decades and raised three children while building the business.
At one point or another, all three children have worked alongside their parents.
Today, their oldest son is a Marine. Their daughter is studying to become a nurse. Their youngest son works in a laboratory.
When Teo and Teresa were asked what they were most proud of after everything they had accomplished, they didn’t mention the truck.
They didn’t mention the elote.
They didn’t mention surviving nearly two decades in the restaurant business.
Their answer was simple:
Their children.
And maybe that says more about Los Reyes than anything on the menu.
The food truck is a business, but it has also been the backdrop to their life together—marriage, children, long workdays, saving, sacrifice and a dream that is still unfinished.
The Next Dream Is Bigger Than the Truck
After all these years, Teo and Teresa still want something more.
Their long-term goal is to open a physical restaurant, ideally in South Orange County, where they could introduce another community to their homemade Pueblano dishes.
The obstacle is the one facing so many independent restaurant owners:
Money.
Startup costs. Lease expenses. Build-out costs. And the enormous amount of capital required to turn a food operation into a permanent restaurant.
So they continue doing what they’ve already done for years.
Working.
Saving.
And sacrificing.
The difference is that this time, they’re doing it with nearly two decades of customers behind them.
Maybe “Hidden Gem” Isn’t the Right Description
It would be easy to package Los Reyes Del Elote Asado as another “hidden gem.”
Social media loves hidden gems.
The phrase suggests discovery. Something secret. Something you can tell your friends you knew about first.
But there’s something strange about calling a business hidden when the people behind it have been showing up since 2006.
Los Reyes has been here.
Teo and Teresa have been cooking.
Their children grew up around the business.
Customers have returned year after year.
The handmade tortillas kept hitting the griddle. The mole kept simmering. The corn kept roasting.
So maybe the story isn’t that someone finally discovered Los Reyes Del Elote Asado.
Maybe the story is that Teo and Teresa Herrera kept showing up long enough to build something worth discovering.
When they were asked to look back on what they had accomplished, their response captured that sense of disbelief better than any marketing slogan could.
“We never thought we’d be able to accomplish this.”
Nearly 20 years later, they’re still not finished.
And judging by the food coming out of that truck—and the people who keep returning for it—the kings of grilled corn still have another chapter to write.
