As a kid in El Salvador, Saul Zelaya ate his grandmother’s freshly made corn tortillas with nearly every meal. But at age 10, when his family immigrated to Maryland, he abruptly stopped. Packaged corn tortillas just weren’t the same.  “To me, they just tasted like nothing,” Zelaya says. “ So I completely stopped eating them here. That’s what kind of got my mind working on that.” Zelaya’s family settled in Montgomery County, where his mother worked as a line cook, and he entered the restaurant business as a host at age 16. He worked as a busser and prep cook at Rockville restaurants before staging at Kinship, Bresca, and Rose’s Luxury. While honing his skills in fine dining though, he began collecting cookbooks by acclaimed Mexican chef Enrique Olvera and researching Oaxaca. In 2021, he traveled there for a stint in the kitchen at Criollo, Olvera’s Michelin-recognized restaurant.  Inspired by the Oaxacan focus on the flavor of nixtamalized corn, Zelaya started Hijos del Maíz (“Children of the Corn”) when he got home— initially as a roving farmers market pop-up with his wife, Yadira. They milled their own corn to make masa for tortillas, tostadas, and tetelas.  In January, the Zelayas opened Hijos del Maíz as a permanent food trailer in Rockville. The menu is short and focused: tacos, quesadillas, and tostadas—all made with freshly pressed corn tortillas—along with tortas and tetelas.  The tetelas, a distinctive Oaxacan-style snack, is made by folding a tortilla three times around a bean-and-cheese filling, forming a pouch that resembles a tricorn hat, and then throwing it on the griddle. Pick one up and dip a corner into some green salsa—it’s the perfect sauce vehicle.  Hijos del Maíz may now have a permanent location, but it’s still pretty bare-bones: a small trailer, painted goldenrod yellow, wedged into a corner of a Shell station parking lot on Rockville Pike. The trailer is barely big enough for two employees to work in, and it has no outside seating. Even so, the place has already earned a writeup in the Baltimore Banner and a glowing recommendation from the Washington Post (plus a mention on Washingtonian’s own newsletter).  Hijos del Maíz will have picnic tables for outdoor dining this summer, and soon, Zelaya is hoping to find a brick-and-mortar storefront somewhere in Rockville or Bethesda. The menu will likely expand, too, but it will still be all about the corn. The fresh tortillas at Hijos del Maíz are soft, pliable, and flavorful—as much of a departure from the packaged kind as a fresh baguette is from a supermarket loaf.  “We’ve had several people come by and say ‘I don’t really eat corn tortillas, but these are amazing,’” Zelaya says. “It makes a difference.”The post Corn is the Star at this New Rockville Taco Trailer first appeared on Washingtonian. ...read more read less