Guy Fieri’s latest foray into the Mobile dining scene should illustrate two intriguing points: Firstly, you can fit some interesting flavors into a taco. Secondly, you can — if you believe in yourself and try hard enough — stuff the “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” production crew into what must be one of the tiniest kitchens in the Port City.

That’d be the tight confines of the tiny trailer that serves as the home of Front Yard Tacos, where options range from really safe (the “Regular” Taco with ground beef, or just a big side of tater tots) to kind of wild (for example the Tiki Taco, filled with Brussels sprouts). The taco stand will be featured in a new “DDD” episode making its premiere at 8 p.m. Central time on Friday, Dec. 8.

It’s the fifth of six Mobile-area restaurants visited last summer by Fieri and the production crew for the Food Network Show; the others featured so far have been The Noble South, The Hummingbird Way, Roosters and Southwood Kitchen.

Like other participants, the folks at Front Yard Tacos expressed appreciation for “Panini Pete” Blohme, an area restaurateur who’s a longtime associate of Fieri and who has been involved in Fieri’s exploration of the Mobile scene.

Co-owner Claire Gautreaux, business partner Matt Morris and chef Roy Durand said the taco stand’s small footprint, and the furnace heat of last summer, made for an interesting shoot in June.

“They made it work, said Durand. “I mean, they had lights shining into the side [through the window], they had cameras, they had two guys in the back, up against the wall. … We had to turn off our hood vents, the AC, we normally have two fans, we had to turn everything off. Normally, in summer, with all that stuff on it’s still 115. With everything off they kept having to take breaks to basically go breathe. They made it work. It was really tight.”

The AC and ventilation had to be off because of the noise they made, Durand explained. One of the crew chiefs started referring to the air conditioning as “the joy,” Morris said.

“When they were ready to turn the cameras on, he’d be like, ‘Kill the joy,’” Durand said. When the shooting was finished for the moment, they could “Turn the joy back on.”

You probably won’t see all that in the episode. What you hopefully will see is a story that has taken some surprising turns since Tim and Claire Gautreaux opened Nova Espresso on St. Anthony Street in early 2019. Located on the edge of the tree-lined De Tonti Square district, it was a few blocks from the Dauphin Street corridor, with all its food and entertainment options. And some of those blocks were pretty empty.

However, the gap was closing quickly. A new federal courthouse, dedicated in late 2018, was within easy walking distance. St. Louis Street was rapidly transforming as well. Long a drab, under-used stretch of old commercial properties, it was becoming the new home of breweries, the Mobile Chamber’s Innovation PortAL business incubator, an engineering firm’s HQ, and an upscale Greer’s market designed to cater to downtown’s growing residential population.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a lot of disruption, but it also brought tacos.

“COVID was really sort of what propelled us into doing food,” said Claire Gautreaux. “Because we weren’t having people in the cafe. People were coming here for coffee and we were serving them in their cars, to go, like a glorified Sonic drive-in. So we just started making grab and go breakfast tacos and that kind of blew up. Once we started letting people back in, we just kept getting asked over and over again, ‘Are you guys gonna do the breakfast tacos?’”

“I was a regular here, from the day I moved here really,” said Morris, a native of the Chicago area who came to Mobile by way of New Orleans. He and Tim got to be friends, and he became a partner in their expansion into food, which started with pop-ups and led to the recruitment of Durand and the decision to park a food trailer on Nova Espresso’s lawn.

It seems to have paid off. Late on a Saturday morning, for example, you don’t just find thriving businesses at the corner of St. Anthony and Claiborne. You find what looks like a thriving community: An eclectic clientele, ranging from parents with babies in strollers to students and young professionals to Lycra-clad cyclists restocking calories after a group ride. In addition to coffee and tacos you might find a small arts and crafts market on site.

“I can’t say that we like knew that that was going to happen,” Claire Gautreaux said of the way the place has become a neighborhood hub. “That’s what we had hoped was going to happen.”

Now, let’s focus on those tacos. After considering a variety of kitchen options, including an addition to the Nova building, they picked up their trailer in January 2021. Next they settled on Durand as someone who was both an innovative chef and someone who would fit in well with the group. (It helps that he’s from Lafayette, La., same as the Gautreauxs, which Claire Gautreaux said was “a happy accident.”)

Durand said he wasn’t necessarily a taco guy, but he figured he had plenty of ideas that could work in that format. It also gave him a flexible platform to play with Asian and Cajun influences.

“We just kind of let Roy go wild,” said Gautreaux.

What has evolved is a menu that’s one part comfort food, one part fusion and one part adventure. Want to play it safe? Get a “regular” ground-beef taco, or a bacon-egg-and-cheese breakfast taco, or carne asada. Want to get just a little bit wilder? The Avocado Taco also features smothered mushrooms and onions and pineapple ginger slaw. The Club Taco uses grilled chicken, bacon avocado and the same slaw. There’s a Buffalo Chicken Taco.

Want to ease out into the kind of territory where you find yourself wondering who came up with that idea? So did Fieri: The website for “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” chose to showcase the recipe for Front Yard’s Tiki Taco. Picture flash-fried Brussels sprouts in a sweet-tart glaze with tamari soy sauce, Hoisin sauce, and three kinds of citrus, topped with pineapple ginger slaw, smothered mushrooms and onions, pickled jalapeno slices, miso mushroom aioli and a lime crema, all topped with green onions.

“The flavors kind are all over the place but they work well together,” said Durand. “This kind of represents us, what we do.”

“Roy’s really humble with his stuff, but I will say like when Guy ate this, being able to watch it from over here and listen to what he was saying, I hope it shows up on the show,” said Morris. “There’s a lot going on in this taco. There’s a lot of different ingredients and sauces. There’s a Tamari glaze that needs to be made separately. So there’s a lot that goes on and it comes together and kind of really sweet harmony. And all the components make sense for you to eat it. You know, you might read the ingredient list and be like, ‘Why does there need to be green onion on the top? There’s already like 10 things before that.’ When you’re eating it, you understand how it all comes together.”

Offering a big range from a small operation is “what I think is the beautiful thing about the truck,” said Morris. They can serve a customer whose tastes run to regular tacos, chicken strips and fries, or one who favors fine dining.

“We can serve a customer who’s very, like, ‘chicken strips and fries,’” he said. “But I think it’s cool to kind of [provide] like a very safe zone for someone who’s maybe looking to try more adventurous food.”

It’s fun to watch regular customers start in their comfort zones and then explore, he said. “It’s really rewarding for sure.”

“There’s a lot of people that just will always get the special even if they’ve never had something like that before,” said Durand. “Just because they trust us now. They trust us, even if it’s kind of weird.”

A couple of recent examples: Border Potatoes, with Conecuh sausage and potato hash, queso, cranberry aioli, crema, green onions and a fried egg. Golden State Curry, a veggie dish served on basmati rice and fresh arugula with pickled onion, crema and cilantro. Chicken and sausage gumbo with potato salad. A chicken parmesan taco.

Clearly, there’s a lot more to Front Yard Tacos than just tacos.

“It’s almost like now the weirder, the better,” said Gautreaux. “The weirder we get, [the more] they’re like ‘Yeah, let’s go there.’”

Front Yard Tacos is at 306 St. Anthony St. and is open 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily except Tuesdays, when it is open until 7 p.m. Menus and online ordering can be found at www.frontyardtacos.com; updates on daily specials, and photos from the taping of “DDD,” can be found at www.facebook.com/frontyardtacos.

The “Flavor Explosion” episode of “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” premieres at 8 p.m. Central time on Friday, Dec. 8, with a repeat at 11 p.m. According to www.foodnetwork.com it will be shown at 5 p.m. Dec. 16; 3:30 p.m. Dec. 23; 9 p.m. Jan. 19; and midnight Jan. 20. “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” can be seen via cable and streaming providers that carry the Food Network, and via www.foodnetwork.com. Streaming services that carry Food Network programming include Philo and FuboTV.