The line that forms at 1654 Fifth Avenue in Bay Shore has never had anywhere to sit. Taquero Mucho, the taco truck that has spent years parked in front of a storage facility on that stretch, serving until 9:30 on weeknights and 11 on weekends, now has a second home with tables, chairs and a roof. The truck's owner has opened Taquero Mucho Dix Hills at 15 East Deer Park Road, and it is open now.

From a storage lot to a storefront

Food trucks earn their followings the hard way. There is no dining room to soften the experience, no ambience to lean on, nothing but the food handed through a window. Taquero Mucho built its reputation on exactly that: street tacos on corn tortillas, birria served with its broth for dipping, burritos and quesadillas made while you stand on the pavement of Fifth Avenue and wait. The truck's Instagram following runs to nearly nine thousand people, a number plenty of brick-and-mortar restaurants on Long Island would take in a trade.

Owner Max Carballo announced the expansion on the business's social channels in early August. The new spot sits on East Deer Park Road in Dix Hills, about a fifteen minute drive north of the truck. It is a proper restaurant: dine-in seating, curbside pickup and delivery, open from 11 in the morning. The phone number is 631-559-8898.

The truck is not going anywhere

The detail that matters most to Bay Shore: the original truck stays in service at its usual spot on Fifth Avenue, with its usual hours, noon to 9:30 Monday through Thursday and noon to 11 on Friday and Saturday. The restaurant is an addition, not a replacement. Carballo has also said a second truck is coming on weekends with a different specialty entirely: bacon-wrapped hot dogs.

That makes this a rare kind of expansion. The usual story is a truck that graduates to a storefront and quietly retires the wheels that built the name. This one is keeping the truck, adding a dining room, and adding a second truck on top.

What is on the menu

The Dix Hills menu carries the truck's greatest hits. The birria comes as tacos with the broth on the side, the thing regulars order first and tell their friends about after. There are street tacos in the classic builds, chopped onion and cilantro on corn tortillas, along with burritos, quesadillas and the salsas that did a lot of the truck's marketing for it. The new location's first Google reviews landed within days of the doors opening, and they read like the truck's always have. More than one calls it the best Mexican food its writer has found on Long Island, and the early rating sits at 4.9.

The room itself is small and simple, which is the right instinct. Nobody who waited in line at a storage facility for tacos was waiting for decor.

If birria is new to you, it is the dish worth the trip on its own: beef braised slow in chiles until it shreds, folded into tortillas that get crisped on the griddle, with a cup of the braising broth alongside for dipping. It moved from Tijuana taco stands to national obsession over the last several years, and the version that built this truck's line is the reason to order it here first.

Why a taco truck opening a dining room is news

Because the hard part already happened. A restaurant opening is a bet that people will come; a truck with years of lines already knows they will. What the storefront adds is everything the truck could not offer: somewhere to sit in January, a table big enough for a family, a kitchen that does not close when the weather turns. Dix Hills and the neighborhoods around it, Deer Park, Commack, Huntington Station, now have a sit-down version of something people were already driving to Bay Shore for.

If you are one of the people who made the truck a fixture, the pilgrimage just got shorter and gained chairs. And if you have never stood on Fifth Avenue wondering what the line was for, the answer now comes with a parking lot. Either way, go for the birria.