A roundup from the past week or so of eating on the street:

After visiting New Mexico last month for the first time, I started going through enchilada withdrawal this week.

For years now, my two Memphis enchilada go-to choices have been La Guadalupana on Summer Avenue and the Chile Verde food truck in East Memphis. 

We tend to associate Mexican food trucks with tacos, for good reason, and secondarily with burritos. These are both better suited to standing and eating with your hands. Chile Verde boasts a full menu, and I don’t think I’ve ever gotten anything less than good there, but it’s the lone local truck where I’ve tended toward the enchiladas.

It had been awhile. Chile Verde — a longtime Memphis food-truck staple that predates the more recent boom in options — used to set up in a gas station lot at Mt. Moriah and White Station, just down the street from the sports-talk radio station 92.9 FM. I used to get lunch there once or twice a month before or after appearances. 

At some point in the past few years, Chile Verde relocated a couple of miles, to a gas station at Park and Mendenhall, where I grabbed a delicious enchilada special for lunch this week as a couple of neon-vested workers waited behind, one telling the other the thumbnail food truck history I just told you. The food was as good as I’d remembered.

Chile Verde is not a rover. It stays put in its station lot, with no tables around. It does back up to Marquette Park, where I took my lunch to have on a park bench. Public parks and food trucks: Great things that go great together. Chile Verde seems to have stopped updating its Instagram, but you can find it on Facebook here. 

If Chile Verde is something old this week, Loaf was something new.

Housed in an Airstream trailer at 973 Blythe Street. behind First Congregational Church in Cooper-Young, Loaf had a soft opening a few weeks ago and settles into regular hours this weekend: Thursdays (5-8:30 p.m.), Fridays (11 a.m.-2 p.m. and 5-8:30 p.m.) and Saturdays (9 a.m.-2 p.m.). You can follow them here. 

Everybody’s looking for a good fried chicken sandwich these days, and Loaf enters the fray in a major way with their Memphis Honey Gold, with pickles and mayo on good crusty, thick-sliced and toasted white bread. The rest of the menu suggests a welcome boost of culinary diversity to the local food truck scene: Heirloom tomato and mole sandwich? Pistachio and fig “PBJ”? Color me intrigued. I’ve only had time to drop in once so far, but will circle back in this space in the coming weeks. 

And Slutty Salsa was something new. Fitting its name, this truck offers a promiscuous take on Mexican street food such as tacos and quesadillas, with its own flavor profiles and a tendency to melt cheese all over the place. This turns out to be particularly yummy with rice, like a kind of slightly lighter mac-and-cheese alternative. 

When I stopped by late one recent afternoon, they were getting ready to close and out of their “buttered quesadilla” main menu items. We got an order of the “Soft Smack Tacos,” with sauteed chicken and steak adorned with peppers, onions and “various cheeses.” The tortillas tasted buttered and griddle-fried, and that was a good thing. Slutty Salsa is found most frequently in Whitehaven: At Southland Mall on the day I stopped by, sometimes at the Kroger on East Shelby Drive. They update regularly on Instagram. 

Speaking of gooey, tasty bastardizations of Mexican street food: New Wing Order’s July special is a culture clash of two of the most favored of finger foods: Street taco wings?

Wings tossed in the truck’s own hot Buffalo sauce are combined with their homebrew taco seasoning and then adorned like street tacos: Cilantro, chopped onion and a lime wedge.

The combination of wet sauce and dry spice yields a muddy texture, perhaps especially if you get it to go rather than eating on site. This is neither praise nor criticism, merely description. I knocked out a six-wing order for dinner recently with no regrets, but while it’s a nice change of hot-wing pace, I probably wouldn’t order the “street taco” wings often as a regular flavor option. The onion just got in the way to me, but what I did like was the lime wedge garnish. A fresh squeeze brightened these wings and would do the same, I think, for most any other flavor. Maybe they have something there. 

Because wings pair great with beer, you can often find New Wing Order at breweries such as Grind City Downtown or Meddlesome out east. New Wing Order was one of my go-to spots during Levitt Shell shows pre-COVID. As free shows return in September, perhaps they’ll be back in the rotation there. You can track their whereabouts on Instagram. 

Speaking of July specials, Soi No. 9’s July special is Thai Hot Pepper Fish, which is a fried catfish filet in a spicy-sweet sauce over ginger rice. “Catfish” is enough for any description to grab me, but this just piles good on top of good. 

If you like Thai food — and I love Thai food — then you probably already know. With Bhan Thai recently closing in Midtown, let’s stop and say thanks for Soi. No 9, whose fiery orange food bus can be found all over and whose self-described “Thai street food” can also be found reliably every weekday in the food court at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.

If you don’t know if you love Thai food but are a Southerner in good standing who loves fish and grits (raises hand again), this won’t be much of a reach. Get it while it lasts. Follow Soi. No. 9 here.

Finally, let’s wash all this down: Happy first anniversary to Jojo’s Espresso, a coffee truck most often found in East Memphis and the eastern suburbs. I made a belated first visit this week. I’m not one of those crusty souls who goes into a Starbucks and just orders “coffee,” but my orders tend to stick to three descriptive words or less. (In the summer: “Iced coffee with cream” is standard.) But I went long here: Iced Toasted Almond Coconut Latte. One of the drink specials. Delicious. Flavorful but only mildly sweet. Follow Jojo’s Espresso here. 

And if tea’s more your thing, check out the Sugar Ghost bubble tea truck, which debuted in the lot next to 2613 Broad Ave. last month. They’re open in that location noon-4, Friday-Sunday. I’ll have more on Sugar Ghost on Monday in this space. You can find them here.