Only one light away from Fullerton College resides a popular Mexican food spot with both traditional and inventive options that can satisfy any craving.

Palapas Tacos has a variety of offerings, including tacos, burritos and tortas.

Most notably, the popular food spot has garnered some recent attention online thanks to their interesting combination called Birria Ramen Soup, which is exactly as the name suggests.

This unheard-of combination of Tapatio ramen noodles and birria makes for a surprisingly delicious meal. The classic flavor of the birria mixed with the beef flavor of the ramen is a great pair that is amplified even more with the added Tapatio flavoring and spices.

The meal includes a good sized bowl and one birria taco for $9.95. While the soup is innovative and delicious, it only included two to three small pieces of birria in the ramen, making the ramen to birria ratio extremely off. The medium-sized taco that came with the meal also missed the mark a little bit with the tortilla being on the drier side.

The price is a little on the steeper side, especially since it is widely known that ramen noodles are typically inexpensive. One way to get creative and make the meal more balanced and worth it is to take the birria from the taco and add it the soup.

Aside from this newly discovered and sought after item, the restaurant also serves some popular street-style tacos with meats like carne asada, pastor, chicken, chorizo and carnitas. The flavor of these tacos did the hit the mark and the tortillas tasted freshly made, but at $2.50 each, they’re priced on the higher side when taco trucks typically sell tacos that are just as good for less than half the price.

The mulitas were surprisingly good, and at $2.99, seemed well priced for the flavor and taste of the meat, cheese and tortilla combo.

They also have popular drink items like horchata. For $2.99, the drink was decently sized with an overwhelmingly great taste. It was extra sweet and didn’t have that weird watery taste that horchata can sometimes have.

One of the only downsides of the restaurant is its pricing for otherwise typically cheaper foods. However, the unique taste of some of the options can definitely make it worth it to some.

A mask is required to enter the business, but with it being moderately busy and the building being small, social distancing wasn’t majorly in effect.

Palapas Tacos is located at 133 W. Chapman Ave. and is open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day.