“We Plead the Fifth”: How Anonymity Has Bred Creativity in Local Taco Truck

When I left my home state to come to school in Chicago, leaving my favorite restaurants that I had known and loved for 18 years was a big deal. Every time I pack up to head back to the city after a break or visit home, my family and friends laugh as we embark upon what has become known as “the farewell tour”: in other words, the places I want to go, people I want to see, and things that I want to do in my last few days leading up to the final farewell (dramatic, I know).

Big Truck Tacos, an Oklahoma born taco truck and brick-and-mortar restaurant known as “Big Truck” by locals, is a crucial player in this farewell lineup. Innovation is at the heart of this taco restaurant’s mission: “street food with a chef’s twist.” Scoring a ranking on Business Insider’s “50 best tacos in America, ranked”, Big Truck serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week, either at their physical location or from one of their three trucks. Chef and co-owner Kathryn Mathis describes her approach to creating the menu as “a spin on Mexican food, not trying to be authentic but trying to be fun and playful.” 

The most notable piece of Big Truck’s menu is the “Fifth Amendment Taco.” Every day, the culinary team creates a different concoction to serve as the Fifth Amendment Taco, with one important detail: those who order this taco have no idea what the ingredients are, and every employee is sworn to secrecy as they “plead the fifth.”


An article reports that customers often play 50 questions with the staff when ordering or have a fun time trying to guess what they just ate. The restaurant takes to Instagram and Facebook the next day or at the end of the week to report what ingredients were in each version of the taco. As silly as it may seem, this menu item has also created a sense of community around it -- locals love to come in and see what they’re going to get, week in and week out. Check out a few of their instagram reveals here and here.

Creating the Fifth Amendment Taco is deeply rooted in the geneplore model of creativity, and it is repeated every single day. A variety of chefs work together to engage in divergent thinking by brainstorming unique pairings of ingredients, flavors, and textures. They come up with as many ideas as they can, as they present a different taco every single day. Then, as they begin serving each secret new concoction, they receive and give feedback and practical analysis (convergent thinking) on what works and doesn’t from the customers and team members who try what they came up with. Moving forward, they incorporate some of the popular combinations or find motivation to reintroduce ones that maybe didn’t do so well. In a sense, they also get rid of some of the product constraints associated with the model by working under anonymity. People who typically say they don’t like a certain spice or meat may come to like it when they try it without knowing, as the ingredients are not listed on the menu. They break through the constraint of “oh, but I don’t like …..” or “can I substitute …..” by pleading the fifth!

Big Truck’s ability to maintain a menu full of staple items as well as an ever-changing creative piece is something pretty special. They’ve created a community around creative food and endearing mystery, one that I certainly look forward to each time I return home!