La Mesa Food Truck Serves Mexican Fare With a Mediterranean Spin

"I've always liked Greek food. I love Middle Eastern food and Mediterranean food, so I was like, why don't I share that aspect of me and fuse it with Mexican food?" says Miguel Zavala-Duran, the owner of La Mesa, a food truck that hit the streets of Denver last September.

Before going all in on his food business, Zavala-Duran focused primarily on his work as a musician. While he was playing gigs, a friend reached out to ask if he could lend a hand on her food truck, Cilantro & Perejil. "I stopped by and helped her and was like, 'This is really cool,'" Zavala-Duran recalls. "I liked the rush. Being busy and plates flying all over the place, and I was kind of like, 'There's a beauty to the madness.'"

So he continued to work on the truck when he was in between gigs. "I've done all kinds of jobs. As an artist...it's like we really don't fit in anywhere. So you kind of have to look for places where you can fit in and be happy, be satisfied. So I stumbled upon the food industry by accident, and I happened to like it. And it was like, 'Oh, this might be something I like and something that I'm actually good at,'" Zavala-Duran says.
Then COVID came along. "The pandemic was a wake-up call, because my livelihood was taken away," he remembers. "I'm like, I need to do something. I'm forty years old, and I need to plan for the future."

That plan, he decided, was to start his own food truck. He put his life savings into the project. "I knew I could do it, because I loved it and had a passion for it," says Zavala-Duran, who is originally from Mexico City. "I already sort of had an idea of what kind of food I wanted to serve. I wanted to make good Mexican food, but I didn't want to just be another Mexican food truck. I wanted to stand out in my own way and offer something different." That desire led him to the idea of combining his love of Greek fare with his Mexican roots.

As he continued to work on creating a menu, he found and purchased a food trailer in Texas — and a vehicle to tow it with. "I literally bought my pickup truck the day before going down to pick up [the trailer]," he says.

When it came to choosing a name for his business, Zavala-Duran knew that he wanted something both Americans and Mexicans could relate to. "La Mesa [Spanish for 'table'] — that's where people come together and they break bread or they enjoy a meal that we've all prepared and put love into it," he explains. "That's the type of experience that I want people to have when they come try my food. It's like you're literally sitting at my table."
Now six months into owning his own business, Zavala-Duran says that he finds himself feeling like his work matters, adding that he couldn't be happier.

The Greek/Mexican mashups on the menu certainly do help La Mesa stand out from the crowd. The Chicken Pitadilla, for example, is the truck's take on the classic quesadilla, with pita bread subbed in for the tortilla. Instead of serving tortilla chips with guacamole, pita is sliced and deep fried to a crispy golden brown. And don't skip the Mexican street corn bowl, a spin on classic elote with the corn cut off the cob.

For a taste of this culinary mashup, check out La Mesa on Instagram and Facebook, where it shares its weekly schedule.