Taco Fest to take over downtown Royal Oak

ROYAL OAK — After a successful first year, the Royal Oak Taco Fest is looking to have an even bigger second.

The Royal Oak Taco Fest will take place June 30 to July 4 around the Centennial Commons in the downtown. More than 50 eateries will be showcased at the festival, with options that will include steak, pork, fish, chicken and vegetarian dishes.

Event Producer Jon Witz said the focus of the inaugural Taco Fest was on getting a diverse group of food options together for the attendees. For its follow-up, the focus is on learning from last year and improving the festival.

“The restaurants all did so well last year that everybody wants to come back,” he said. “We have more than 20% more trucks than we had last year, but the big word this year was to tweak the event, make it a better experience, add more space, more trucks, more entertainment, more activities, work on a new footprint in the city.”

Curating Taco Fest in year two was the event’s biggest challenge, Witz said. He stated that questions arise in deciding the right number of food trucks, estimating the number of people who will attend so they don’t wait too long in lines, and creating the right number of activities and amount of entertainment for the number of people estimated to attend.

“The recruiting of the restaurants has been, you know, it’s a lot of logistics work, but we haven’t had to sell that part,” he said. “Top local musicians want to play. So the entertainment and programming has been more logistics than a hard sell. And it’s just really what are we curating, what is the right size? What is the right amount of activities to have for this crowd? What’s this crowd going to be like this year?”

The Drunken Rooster food truck, which worked the first Royal Oak Taco Fest, will be in attendance for this year as well with its Mediterranean-inspired tacos and za’atar fries.

Owner Hassan Musselmani, who’s been running the Drunken Rooster since 2016, said the food truck mostly does catering for private events, but he likes to be able to do one festival a month to be out in the public.

“This is a good one for us,” he said of Taco Fest. “We’re gonna have our food truck there selling our full menu, and then on the other side of the festival, we’re gonna have a big tent. We’re gonna be grilling corn fresh, making all of our flavors of Mexican street corn live outside.”

Musselmani said his food truck signed up at the last minute for the event last year, but it was a big hit with the Drunken Rooster selling 6,000 ears of corn.

The Detroit native said Taco Fest last year was a great experience and he’s excited to come back again.

“Doing private events, I don’t see too many of my food truck friends, but at these big events, we all get to get together and have a good time and serve some great people,” he said.

Looking back on last year, Witz said he didn’t know how the event was going to turn out, but it was a “resounding success.”

“There’s a challenge in trying to curate the right amount of space and trucks, and we have a better idea this year,” he said. “This will be … one of the strongest lineups of food and local music and entertainment that we’ve ever put on. The Royal Oak Taco Fest was great in year one, but it’s taken three steps forward in year two.”

Aside from food options, there will be a variety of musical acts across the five days, plus lucha libre, a pet costume competition and ax throwing.

Tickets for Taco Fest cost $8 in advance and $12 at the gates. The event’s hours are 4-11 p.m. June 30, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. July 1-3, and 11 a.m.-9 p.m. July 4. Centennial Commons is located at 221 E. Third St.

For more information on the event and a list of participating businesses, visit royaloaktacofest.com.