The Great Texas Taco Tour
If you’re not in San Antonio when you’ve just got to have a bite, here’s where to get satisfaction the north, south, east, and west.
rose says: We would like to invite you to try our south of the border style tacos at Taqueria El Zarape....mmmm. We have 9 locations valleywide, and have been voted best Taqueria by The McAllen Monitor’s readers(newspaper}many years in a row. (June 24th, 2009 at 3:42pm)
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In the All-time Great Lunch category, check out the chicken tacos on semi-puffed, barely creased corn tortillas at Amaya’s Taco Village, a long, spare, immaculate place in far East Austin. Everything about these tacos works, especially in tandem with a very cold beer in an iced-down glass (4821 E. Seventh, 385-7534). An Austin breakfast landmark ought to be the El Jorge Special taco at the felicitously named Don Juan’s and Only Taco Palace, a funky red-vinyled barrio spot. Egg, potato, chopped bacon (not sliced, a signal difference), and finely shredded cheese that melts up satisfyingly, all on a good, thin flour tortilla—Jorge should be proud (2300 E. First, 472-3872). I’m also crazy about the picadillo-and-potato taco at the charming Mexico Típico Restaurante, admiring of their plump, carefully wrought egg-potato-and-bacon taco, and nuts about their frothy fruit licuados, particularly the banana (1707 E. Sixth, 472-3222).
On the all-important take-out front, the upscale pint-size Inocente’s Cafe on the east side features a drive-through window and worthy barbacoa tacos, enticingly smoky, black-peppery tacos de chicharrón, and perfectly serviceable guisada, fajitas, or chorizo-and-potato (2337 E. First, 479-0218). More soulful by half again is Dos Hermanos Tortillería, with a frumpy outdoor produce stand and zesty tacos to go. Chicken fajitas here couldn’t be better, with grilled onions, peppers, and laid-back marinade; picadillo is the real, down-home thing, and the guisada is no slouch. Only beware of the oversalted, overshredded gallina taco (2730 E. First, 474-9655). The time-honored, workhorse take-out tacos from Austin’s Tamale House rate a nod; their unique character comes from onions and pickled jalapeños rather than from salsa. This is the place to sample that Austin standby, the “regular flour taco”—picadillo and beans, basically; order the guacamole version and you’ll get avocado, lettuce, and tomato too. Also reliable: the guisada or the warmed-over (but still decent) potato-and-egg (2825 Guadalupe, 472-0487).
El Paso
Tacos aren’t a big deal in El Paso proper. Chile rellenos, burritos—now those are big deals, which is only fitting given El Paso’s New Mexican orientation. Likely as not, the tacos you order in an El Paso restaurant (be it humble or not-so) will turn out to be of the humdrum, hard-shell Tex-Mex variety. Breakfast tacos? Such newfangled notions have yet to take hold in this strongly traditional, relatively isolated city. For the liveliest tacos one must venture to the other side of town—across the Rio Grande to Juárez, that is. There norteño-style grilled-meat tacos are served far, far into the night, along with a constellation of taco accoutrements: green sauce, salsa cruda, steaming stacks of corn and flour tortillas, sundry chiles, lime wedges, grilled green onions (cebollitas to the locals), and the nearly obligatory side dish of molten white cheese, queso fundido.
Chihuahua Charlie’s, a festive place in the ProNaF that appears deceptively tourist-trappy, does a prime version of the norteño-style spread known as the taco tray. Ensconced on a Carta Blanca platter, it is taco-doctoring heaven—small bowls of shredded pork, chicken, and beef, moist inside and crusted on the outside, multitudinous condiments, plus that vital supply of small, handmade tortillas hot off the open-to-view comal. Try the pork with chunky guacamole, a squeeze of lime, and a lightening bolt of salsa cruda; fix up those thin shards of beef with a fat, smoky chipotle chile and maybe a flour tortilla; douse the chicken with smooth, sassy green sauce. Refritos, chopped onions, and jalapeños further gild your lilies. At about $3.50 U.S., the taco tray is an astonishing bargain. A final indulgence: a side order of queso carioca, a slab of white cheese discreetly breaded, fried until warm and subtly spongy, then showered with a whole meadowful of cilantro, some crunchy onion, and a lake of green sauce. Yum-ola, as one serious El Paso eater says eloquently (2525 Avenida 16 de Septiembre, 011-52161-3-9940).
A far less slick Juárez purveyor of grilled-meat tacos is El Abajeño, an old-timey, sobersided place with good, basic queso fundido (called queso abajeño here), rough guacamole, and meats that are hacked small and thoroughly griddled—they’re not succulent, but they’re tasty. Good bets are the carne adobada, tiny crusty pieces of pork spiked with red chile and spicy chorizo; pork tenderloin; charcoaly steak revved up with chorizo or bacon; and the excellent chile relleno tacos, really poblano rajas meshed in pully white cheese. This is the place where you can practice your cebollita-eating technique: bite down over the bulb, squeeze the stalk, and pull. More fun than crawfish, huh? (2349 Escobar, 011-52161-3-9940).
For your essential Juárez street-taco experience, duck into El Taquito Mexicano, an open-front cubicle on Avenida Colón just south of the famous Kentucky Club bar. One guy slices pork off a vertical mesquite-fired spit while another slaps a jot onto a tiny corn tortilla and hands you four of them wrapped in a napkin for 50 cents. Put some dangerous red-flecked green salsa and some tart marinated onions in plastic cups, and either join the young bloods snacking outside on the sidewalk or tote your taquitos into the Kentucky to nosh on with margaritas. Okay, okay—pick out the morsels of fat if you must.
Back across the bridge, in tamer El Paso territory, the mesquite-roasted, marinated-pork tacos al pastor are worth sampling at the lushly bemuraled El Cerezo. So are the chicken tacos, which boast the welcome texture of roasted rather than damp-boiled fowl. Avoid the salty, congealing queso fundido; it features Chihuahuan cheese, but it needs work (610 N. Mesa, 542-1745).
Don’t leave town without visiting any one of four Lucy’s Restaurants for a machaca burro—an honorary taco in my book, its overgrown format notwithstanding. Full of dryish, shredded beef and sautéed onion barely bound by egg and sealed up with chile con queso, this is good chow.
Dallas
I confess that I held out few hopes for tacos in Dallas, a town that’s swell for expensive food and terrible for cheap food. Surely goat cheese and sun-dried anchos were the order of the day, I sniggered from afar. But I reckoned without the vital Hispanic working-class population in Oak Cliff and east and west Dallas, where plenty of just-folks fuel up at taqueriás so funky they’d steam the wrinkles right out of the linen-clad Apparel Mart set. Take the daily taco lineup at the Imperial Tortillería alongside Love Field: robust adobadas of pork or beef laden with vivid red chile shards; spicy, practically greaseless chorizo-and-potato bound with a smidgen of egg; chicharrón in a salsa verde so pugnacious it could drive the roof of your mouth straight into your cranium. Even the picadillo-with-potato and the refried beans have what it takes. Good sign: everyone from airline pilots to employees of the nearby Chevy dealership feel proprietary about the place (8116 Denton, 352-4881).
Grocery stores are another prime Dallas taco source. Witness Jerry’s Supermarket in Oak Cliff, where an obliging señorita favors vacillating gringos with samples of barbecued beef, tomato-laced chicken, or green-chiled milanesa. Jerry’s is where I finally met my taco Waterloo: chutzpah failed me in the face of pigs’ snouts and ears (trompas y orejas), which resemble bizarro fatty squids (532 W. Jefferson, 941-8110).
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