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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The nabes also harbor no-nonsense workingmen’s joints like Taquería Pedrito’s three branches, the Oak Cliff outpost of which features a winning Grandma Mosesesque mural and an impressive taco steam table that the young black South Carolinian in front of me described as down-home cooking. The asado de puerco, chopped and garnished in Mexico City style by the friendly counterman, is a good choice; tongue and brains, while adequate, are less soulful than they appear to be. The taquería’s Mexico City bias means tacos come in double-deck corn tortillas, a redundancy that has more to do with function than with taste (321 E. Jefferson, 941-1864). At the Taqueria Pinocho in east Dallas (one of two locations) the spare, tatty surroundings are, amazingly enough, mitigated by get-down carnitas with a dynamite salsa, tongue that benefits mightily from the same salsa, and scrambled huevos rancheros that are better than they have any right to be. The steam-table vats bubble with whole chilies, and the taco format is again Mexico City style — cilantro, onion, and double corn tortillas (118 S. Carrol, 823-4272).
At the opposite end of the scale is pretty-pink Chiquita, where polite Dallas dines on Texas’ most elegant tacos: rajas con crema of earthly poblanos, delicate diced zucchini, a whisper of onion, white cheese, and cream. You feel pampered by this graceful combination, since it’s whisked neatly into a flour tortilla by the waiter. Also conducive to self-satisfaction are the tiny, pan-fried taquitos (pipos)—neither too crisp nor too soft—swaddling a whole grill shrimp with its tail sticking out. Chiquita makes the Dallas establishment’s tacos al carbón of choice, smoky and tender but with an unsettling braised texture (3810 Congress, 521-0721). Instead, I’d opt for the feistier tacos al carbón at El Tío Lupe, where the pico de gallo is mixed right in, the guacamole sparkles with lime, the sopaipillas are flaky, and the collection of Mexican-restaurant-décor icons is even flakier (4307 Bryan, 824-4787).
Dallas isn’t enamored of breakfast tacos (“because they don’t come in taupe and mauve,” snipes resident food pundit George Toomer); perhaps that’s because Dallasites haven’t made their own out of the macho machacado—scrambled eggs, mucho dried shredded beef, tomatoes, onions, and green chile—at La Cocina Alegre, a cozy Oak Cliff luncheonette (1001 W. Jefferson, 946-0151). Or maybe Dallas taco-eaters have been burned at Gonzalez, a popular drive-through where the breakfast tacos (called burritos here) are sabotaged by flour tortillas that resemble bready pancakes. That would be a pity, since Gonzalez’s carne guisada and hotter guiso mexicano are sterling stuff. Gonzalez does a very Dallas thing by allowing you to drive through and pay for your tacos with American Express (4333 Maple, 528-2960). Border Stop, a fast-food fajita place, does Gonzalez one better with two drive-through lanes at which credit cards are legal tender. Don’t laugh. The breakfast taco of migas and fajitas, which I tried as a joke, turned out to be a fetching amalgam of well-seasoned eggs, soft-fried tortillas, good beef, crunchy grilled onions, and chile con queso. And the fresh-tasting chicken fajita taco with guacamole convinced me that if this is the fast food of the eighties, all is not lost (3923 Lemmon, 522-3770).
Houston
The taco scene is bigger, more specifically urban, and—dare I say it?—a tad more interesting in Houston than in Dallas. A few generalities apply: breakfast tacos haven’t taken the town by storm, everyone is preoccupied with fajitas, and an underground gringo tradition of late-night taquería slumming persists. In the broad light of day, several taco standbys have withstood the test of time. Let’s be honest — Ninfa’s tacos al carbón, catalysts for the Texas al carbon craze, have worn awfully well, and its make-your-own tacos of carnitas, green tomatillo salsa, avocado, onion, and sour cream are a polished example of the breed. Merida, just down from Ninfa’s original east-side barrio location, goes right on producing the same tender, savory tacos de cochinita pibil—Yucatecan-marinated pork sheathed in handmade tortillas that resemble flat corn cakes, with snappy pickled onions as a final flourish (2509 Navigation, 227-0260). And the east-side version of Doneraki Restaurant, the late-night Mexican eatery owned by Greeks (in Houston, that makes a kind of cockeyed sense), still turns out the same revelatory tacos de tripitas, plus particularly good tacos al carbon especiales of either beef or pork, and a molcajete full of guacamole fixings that are a taco doctor’s dream. But avoid Doneraki’s tacos al carbón del trompo, ultramarinated and grilled to a frazzle; ditto the goat-entrail tacos (tacos de machitos), which are strictly an acquired taste (416 N. Seventy-sixth, 923-1906). For a brand-new (and expensive) eighties’ classic, try the mesquite-grilled chicken taco with self-assured red salsa at barbecue-tycoon Jim Goode’s nuevo-wavo hot spot, Goode Company Hamburger and Taqueria. Goode’s witty, neon-lit outdoor patio gets my vote for the environment I would most like to eat my tacos in (4902 Kirby, 520-9153).
In the Homey Hole-in-the-Wall category, there’s the Cortés Meat Market and Deli, a neat inner-city cubbyhole where the pertinent question is, How can a bean-and-cheese taco possibly be this good? By virtue of bacony seasoning and a killer green salsa, that’s how. I’ve never been nuts about the meat tacos here, but I’ll swear by the fresh-tasting guacamole; just add pico de gallo and a dash of that green sauce (2404 W. Alabama, 522-7771). Another small find is La Mexicana Supermarket and Deli in Montrose, a Houston Grand Opera staff haunt where the crew of literally little ladies fusses over a stove to turn out exhilarating red-chiled de guisado de puerco, fajitas in sprightly red salsa mexicana, and picadillo con papas made for the house green sauce. They even serve a good egg-potato-and-ham breakfast taco, a Houston rarity (1018 Fairview, 521-0963).
One legacy of Houston’s late-lamented boom is a whole new taco school represented by urban taquería minichains far slicker than their Dallas cousins—crisper, brighter, cleaner, more formularized. They keep Latin-late hours (you need never go hungry at two in the morning again) and offer almost identical menus: tortas, gorditas, and a standard array of meat tacos, plus funkier items like brains and tongue. The Chimney Rock branch of Taquería Tepatitlán is a perfect prototype of the genre, filling double-deck corn tortillas with good-quality meats—pork al pastor, tongue, baby goat, beef al carbón—that are plain to the point of austerity, cilantro and onion garnish or no. Even the red and green salsas can’t give these tacos soul; they just don’t have the depth, a trait too common among urban-taquería salsas (5708 Chimney Rock, 666-1330).
Higher up the soul scale is the Taquería del Sol, which dishes out some respectable tacos at its east-side location. Prevail on the counterman to give you the filling of poblano chiles and white cheese wrapped in a corn or flour toritilla instead of a gordita—great stuff. The beef-and-pork al pastor, sliced off a vertical spit, is quite nice, and licuados satisfy your sweet tooth (8114 Park Place, 644-0535). My favorite of the new urban taquería school is the Sharpstown branch of the Taquería Mexico. More comfortable than your usual citified taquería, the place feels almost clubby: soft chairs, a schizy disco jukebox, and incandescent lights. They actually grill the outside of their double-deck corn tortillas, and the fillings sport touches of home, from tomatoey chicken guiso to an almost-Mediterranean-tasting milanesa that demands a fillip of onion en escabeche to go along. Sure, their barbocoa is dryish and their tacos al pastor oversalty, but the mammoth goblets full of coconut-spiked horchata, the 95-cent ceiling on tacos, and the 24-hour weekend schedule more than make up for it (7626 Clarewood, 271-0174).
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