Every Houstonian worth their salt is a fan of Lighnin’ Hopkins, the Texas blues musician who made his career in Houston’s Third Ward in the late 40′s. Just recently, I found an amazing YouTube snippet of a 1968 documentary on Mr. Hopkins, by a film guy from Florida named Les Blank, called “The Blues According to Lightnin’ Hopkins.”
Les Blank is a really interesting character, who has filmed dozens of documentaries on music cultures around the world since 1960. One of these is Chulas Fronteras, which heralds the rich culture on the Mexico-Texas border in 1979, way before FOX News and reality shows such as Border Wars existed.
“Taco trucks are operated by immigrants for immigrants. This makes them a fascinating culinary phenomenon, first of all, because they’re serving some items no other venues offer, and second, because they challenge high-minded ideas about authenticity.” – Robb Walsh
When the first commercial for the first episode of The Great Food Truck Race aired, you could hear the collective sound of thousands of palms smacking foreheads across the nation.
Tyler Florence, really?
The food truck craze has run its course in LA and NYC, according to every major food-related publication, to the point where even stating that the truck frenzy has jumped the shark, is jumping the shark. But in the fair town of Houston, Texas, food truck mania just kicked into hyperspeed.
You’ve seen the shiny new food trucks around town. I’m guessing there have been at least two opening up every week in past months. Many offer top-notch cuisine, others miss the mark. They have clever names, they’re active on social media, some of them even have QR codes on their trucks. Phamily Bites, a great late-night Vietnamese truck, sells banh mi sandwiches of many varieties, including filet mignon and Chinese sausage. There’s a photobooth machine on the front of their truck, where patrons of the bars on Washington Avenue can pose and view their duckfaces the very next day on Phamily Bites’ Facebook page.
Newer bars such as Liberty Station, The Boneyard and Kung Fu Saloon have found a symbiotic relationship with food trucks. The trucks make good money, and the bars can keep their patrons from bailing to grab dinner.
Entrepreneurs outside of the restaurant industry have found creative ways to profit from the craze. A tumultuous food truck festival took place in May, and the most recent enterprise is the “H-Town Food Crawl”. I’m not sure why they call it a crawl, because the trucks are all in one place. Tickets are sold to the public for around $25 and for this price you can try samples from a handful of shiny trucks and get drink specials at a local bar.
You can even look forward to a book about these trucks. Houston author (and 29-95 contributor) Paul Galvani is currently working on a book titled, “Houston’s Top 100 Food Trucks”.
One may ask, who blazed the path for this shining armada of culinary warriors?
Mexicans, mostly.
The mobile eatery involves less financial risk than a brick and mortar restaurant, costs less, and can be a platform for restauranteurs who would like to “work their way up”, or prove their concept to financial institutions before investing in a restaurant. El Hidalguense, a Hidalgan restaurant on Long Point known for excellent cabrito and borrego, started as a truck that sold rotisserie chickens. 100% Taquito, a successful venture on the 59 feeder, started as a trailer in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
The side of a true taco truck does not look like the front of a Hannah Montana album. The menu is usually painted by hand. If they serve pork, there will likely be a handpainted Porky the Pig on the side. If they serve chicken, you may see a cartoon chicken, usually in a cowboy hat for some reason. Tacos usually go for around $1.50 each, and a great many taco trucks offer great tacos for as low as $1.00.
Despite the low price, you’ll find amazing food at these trucks. Houston area food fanatics and food critics know them very well. In fact, the Houston Chowhounds have held Taco Truck Crawls for years. (These are free of charge to all participants, by the way.)
Taco trucks (in the Houston metro) are held to the exact same hygienic and procedural standards as shiny trucks, but there is a disconnect in public perception. Average Joe will have no problem eating adventurous, non-familiar food from a shiny truck with a professionally designed menu, but will steer clear of the traditional taco truck, even with a significant price break.
The media definitely plays a role in this perception. While local television has a history of producing hatchet pieces on traditional taco trucks, it has no problem embracing the new wave, as shiny trucks are now regularly featured on morning shows and hired to provide food at city events and festivals. Sadly, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever see Tierra Caliente or El Mapache on Great Day Houston, even though the unheralded taco trucks outnumber shiny trucks by hundreds, if not thousands. They’re not shiny enough for these purposes. The true taco truck, the humble servant of the diverse world of mobile cuisine, does not entitle itself with misleading terms like “gourmet” or “chef-driven”.
“the modular”, a new and very promising truck on the scene, has a sense of humor about the way some food trucks tout their cuisine.
If you haven’t been out to a true taco truck, here are a few suggestions on different sides of town, in no particular order.
Taqueria Mi Jalisco
Berry and Fulton, North Houston
This was a popular spot on the Chowhound’s second Taco Truck Crawl, even though it was across the street from the massively popular Tacorrey truck. (The Tacorrey truck still exists, but hasn’t been set up at this location for a while.) You can find suadero and longaniza tacos here, as well as good tripas. The taquero is very friendly and speaks fluent English, and you’ll get chiles toreados- fresh, grill-charred jalapenos free with every taco plate.
Taconmadre
Various locations, www.taconmadre.com
Although this small chain of taco trucks is in a bit of trouble with the Department of Labor at the moment, there’s no denying that they serve some of the best tacos in town. They have a huge menu, but if you can’t make up your mind, you can never go wrong with their fajita tacos on corn tortillas.
Karancho’s
620 Sheldon Road, Channelview
I’m not sure if this qualifies as a taco truck, as it never goes anywhere. It has a nice patio with big screen TVs on it, but it is technically on wheels. No Houston taco list is complete without it. Tacos al pastor is their specialty, and anyone that knows me also knows I will never shut up about it. It’s a bit of a drive, but Channelview is probably not as far away as you think. It’s best to visit Karancho’s on a weekend in nice weather, when the trompos are getting charred by hot coals while pineapple drizzles all over the bright red achiote-marinated pork like a daydream in a luchador’s siesta.
Taqueria Don Tin
Shepherd and 23rd Street, Heights
There are several taco trucks around town named Don Tin, but specifically I’m talking about the one in the north Heights in the Fiesta parking lot. Tacos are a buck here. Be sure to utilize the provided red salsa, and bring any Spanish knowledge you have- they don’t get many gabachos ordering food at this location. Something unique at Don Tin- you can order Tex-Mex- style “tacos dorados” here. They fry corn tortillas in a U shape on the spot, fill it with your meat of choice, and top it with white cotilla cheese. This is great for taco truck newcomers. It’s best to eat these at the truck, rather than taking them to go.
El Mapache (“The Raccoon”)
Gulfton and Renwick, Southwest Houston
You can eat from the taco truck in the parking lot of the convenient store, or you can sit down in the vibrantly decorated restaurant in the lot behind the store. You really can’t go wrong with the tacos here, and the salsa is excellent.
Veteran’s Memorial and Gears Rd.
Northwest Houston
Here’s a destination spot. Three or four trucks are in the same lot, with plenty of seating. A taco truck, a pupusa truck, a raspas (snow cone) truck, and a chicken truck with a grill in the back. For five bucks, you can buy knockoff DVDs for movies that are still in the theaters. Bring your own beer if you’d like, and bring your friends too.
Nobody knows how long taco trucks have been in Houston, but they've been here for a long, long time. Here's a photograph my friend Robb Walsh took in 1939.
Connie’s Seafood Market, and a tribute to Valentina
When you pull into the parking lot of Connie’s Seafood, you’ll see an odd variety of vehicles. You might see a dropped Monte Carlo on dubs, a new Mercedes S500, and a Ram truck pinstriped with a pattern of Ram logos, parked next to one another. Blue collar families save their money to eat here as a special occasion, and white collars stop in as an escape from their sitcoms.
Bright primary colors and handpainted signs abound, the interior is like walking into a recently painted kindergarten, with an unparalleled selection of toy-releasing quarter machines. If you’re there on a weekend, you’ll find an accordion player and guitarist making their rounds among the tables while you strive to avoid eye contact with them. Calling Connie’s “casual” would be an understatement- for some reason, a lot of moms are wearing sweatpants here at any given time.
When the waitress takes your drink order, choose a michelada. If you don’t care for micheladas, that’s because you’ve never had one from Connie’s. They’ll ask what kind of beer you want with it. Go with the cheapest beer they’ve got, because the beer you choose simply serves as a michelada vehicle. You will instantly understand the power and magnitude of this glorious beverage, and fervently wish that you could make these at home. Lucky for you, they recently started bottling this sauce, and they sell it behind the counter for five bucks if you specifically ask for it. You’re welcome.
You can order from the big menu, or you can walk up to the counter and choose a fresh fish from the ice underneath the glass. This can be really tricky if your Spanish is rough, but the helpful sign boards tell you how to order the fish in both languages. I’m a fan of the black drum, an inexpensive and underrated fish (which they were out of on my last visit), but you can also choose from redfish, red snapper, or flounder. You can buy raw fish by the pound if you’d like to cook it at home, or tell them how you’d like it cooked: fried, grilled, pan-grilled “a la plancha”, steamed, or ranchero style. Translations for the different cooking methods are available on the signs above, but it can still be difficult for non-Spanish speakers to communicate to the waitress. If you’re solo, get the smallest fish they have. Be warned of the ranchero style- it is topped with a spicy mix of stewed tomatoes, garlic, jalapenos and probably serranos. It’s very spicy and tastes great on its own, but you won’t taste the fish at all. You can never go wrong with just frying up your fish. If you choose it “ala plancha” (on the grill), they season it well, and it works great with lime and the available Valentina sauce.
If you’re not familiar, Valentina is a mainstay at every serious taqueria in town. This dark, complex and incredibly inexpensive sauce (that is somehow always missing its lid), is the most underrated liquid substance in the Western hemisphere. It’s better than Sriracha. (Sriracha is incredibly popular, but it’s really just spicy red liquid garlic in a dope looking bottle.) There’s nothing wrong with garlic, but you can’t just make your food taste like pure garlic and say you’re improving the taste. Consider this Emiril Lagassi prick, who made his career taking pride in putting tons of garlic in everything, destroying potential relationships across the globe. Imagine the scores of guys and gals of all ages who attempted to impress their dates with these Lagassi garlic recipes, who were then were grossed out by their own dates due to burpy garlic breath. Go Valentina or go home.
You can order a shrimp or octopus cocktail if you’d like. They have ketchup in them. If I had a Delorean with a flux capacitor, my first mission would be to go back in time and bludgeon the idiot who came up with the idea of putting ketchup in seafood cocktails. If you’re seven years of age, and you’re at Red Lobster with your parents, it’s okay to dip your Kid’s Meal fried popcorn shrimp in ketchup, because you are seven. If you agree with me on this, avoid the seafood cocktails that come in a glass, unless you are the type of person who enjoys the unfortunate marriage of shrimp and ketchup and probably Filet-o-Fish sandwiches, too.
Connie’s has a big variety of fried combo plates, and you’ll be happy with all of them. It’s a diverse menu- you can even order fried alligator gar, which is better than you might imagine. Fried catfish is a mainstay here, and you can’t go wrong with it. The fried stuffed crab here is solid too, as well as the shrimp fried rice. Big portions of fresh seafood here at good prices. This is also a great place to get Gulf oysters when they’re in season, and the combination of oysters and a cold michelada in a frosted bar mug will make you feel like Charlie Sheen on payday. While you’re on this side of town, check out Canino’s market across the street (weekends only), El Bolillo bakery, and keep an eye out for the elusive Rio Verde taco truck.
Connie’s Seafood
2525 Airline Drive
G&T Pro Tip: Next time you want to cook up some pork chops, marinate them in a Ziploc with Valentina and a bit of honey.
When this website launched, the main idea was to build a map of all taco trucks (and gun ranges) in the Houston area (up there to your right). I knew it wouldn’t be easy, because there are just too many trucks to count.
The map has come a long way, but it’s still way behind. I’m not entirely sure how this happened, but the Google map shows that it has had 466,624 views since its creation in 09.
As much fun as it might be for one person to visit every single truck in the Houston metro, it’s just not possible. So I had this nifty idea.
We rounded up a few taco fanatics on Twitter, and chose a place to meet up. After mastering a plan of attack, we then split up into different directions, writing down intersections and addresses to every taco truck around. While eating scores of tacos.We used the #tacoscout hash tag to stay connected on Twitter.
It was a blast. I didn’t count the trucks we added to the map, but it was somewhere in the area of 50 total. This, my friends, is how you fill out a taco map. Once we were stuffed with tacos, we met up at Liberty Station to knock off the trail dust.
So, we’re doing it again. I’m thinking Southeast side, Edgebrook area. If we put a bigger crew together this time, we can expand our reach and explore new taco frontiers. The more great eats we find, the better spots we’ll have for the next Houston Chowhounds Taco Truck Crawl.
If you’re interested, let’s meet up at Starbucks off 45, Sunday, July 10. at 11:30 AM.
Earlier this year, I was introduced to a guy named John Speights; an astute homebrewer, Mexican food aficionado, and fanatic of weird music. While enjoying a Hoppin’ Frog B.O.R.I.S. Oatmeal Imperial Stout in his backyard, I spotted a large circular brick oven, similar to the description in Robb Walsh’s The Tex-Mex Grill and Backyard Barbacoa Cookbook.
“What the hell is that thing?”
“This, my friend, is a brick oven. I use it to cook baby lambs.”
I knew right away that we would be amigos, and that we would share mix tapes, ride bicycles together, and knit one another friendship bracelets.
He explained the process in detail. Before the firepit is built, a large hole is dug out of the ground, and a concrete base is poured in, leaving about a foot and a half of depth. A car tire is used to facilitate pouring the mold. The pit isn’t made of stone bricks, but “fire bricks”, constructed of a ceramic material similar to the inside of a kiln. A special heat-resistant mortar is used when stacking the bricks concentrically. A tight seal is important, so if the bricks or mortar eventually crack, you can use mud to pack in between the cracks. I won’t get into too much detail about the construction of a fire pit, because it’s all over the web and I am not your personal research assistant.
The cooking process can take up to three days. A big fire is lit within the pit, until the bricks are at the correct temperature. At this time, you let the fire burn itself out. A mesh grill is installed over the coals, a pot is placed on top of the grill to collect the meat drippings for birria (a lamb or goat consommé) and another grill is installed above to cook the innocent baby lamb. Although there are countless methods of cooking lamb, he learned this style from his friends in Hidalgo, Mexico.
Leaves of the maguey plant are cut and split, and the seasoned lamb cuts are wrapped in these leaves and tied off with string. You can find these yucca-like leaves in Hispanic produce markets (John prefers to grow his own). John uses lamb testicles in his consommé, along with rice, garbanzo beans, garlic, epazote, and chipotle peppers. Once everything is in place, a tight lid is placed on top and situated so that no air escapes from the pit. Then you just leave it alone for a long, long time and revel in your manliness, because you’re on your way to becoming a true-life backyard badass.
You can do the same thing with goats.
The proprietors of El Hidalguense reign from Hidalgo, a Mexican state rich with historical and gastronomic significance. The name means “guy from Hidalgo”, kind of like you’d call a guy from Texas a Texan. As the case with a great many Mexican restaurants around town, this business started as a food truck and eventually flourished into a full-blown restaurant.
Dr. Jocelyne Gonzalez is a daughter of El Hidalguense’s owners and a friend of mine. We talked about goats once.
“Eat at my parents’ restaurant, or I will kill you with a knife”, she stated grimly, without a hint of sarcasm or humor, while holding a large knife.
El Hidalguense is on Long Point, and as any Houston food adventurer worth their salt knows, is a vast stretch of cultural cuisine. You could eat there every day and never find everything. In fact, it’s a hotspot for Houston Culinary Tours, where people throw down big bucks to hang out with celebrity chefs and chow down on unique foods from around the world. The restaurant is about a block from Taqueria el Ultimo, which is known as one of the greatest taco trucks in the city. In fact, Ultimo was listed in Walsh’s Top Ten a few years back; and very recently, listed as one of The South’s Best Food trucks by Southern Living Magazine. That’s probably why I had never tried El Hidalguense before, or at least that’s my excuse. Driving past Ultimo has always been a cardinal sin.
Several things draw your attention when you walk into El Hidalguense. If you come in on a Saturday or Sunday, you’ll find live music by Trio Alacran Hidalguense, singing and playing in the huapango style. This band is fantastic. The fiddle player’s hands and instrument are coated with chalk dust, and the horse hair of the bow splits into the air as the vocalist conjugates Spanish verbs like a Mexican Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
You’ll see old cowboy hats hanging on the wall that look as if they’ve traveled through deserts, mountains and trail dust for decades. And the most exciting thing (to me, anyway) is the brick firepit where they smoke fresh cabrito (young goat). Their recipes and cooking methods were handed down from Josey’s grandmother in Hidalgo a while back.
If it’s your first time at El Hidalguense, you’re going to want some cabrito. You can choose between cabrito asado (barbeque); or cabrito enchilados, a method where the meat is wet-rubbed with a powder ground from dried chiles. A cabrito plate will set you back about $27, but it is plenty to eat, enough to split with a companion. The plate is a combination of shoulder, ribs, head meat, and if you’re lucky, a kidney or two. If you’re new to cabrito, the aroma can seem a little odd, but once you see the meat fall off of the bone and dig in, you’ll be a believer. After all, goat is by far the most popular meat in the world, and consumed by 75% of the world’s population. Its fat content is 50%-65% lower than similarly prepared beef, but you’ll never notice. I enjoy making cabrito tacos with the accompanying handmade corn tortillas, topped with their smoky salsa, cleverly constructed with Arbol Seco and Morita chiles.
The slow-cooked cabrito is El Hidalguense’s specialty, but the lamb is spectacular as well. Order the barbacoa de borrego (lamb barbacoa), or the spicy nopales (cactus) and puerca (ground pork) gorditas, paired with an icy Tecate. The birria is excellent as well, sopped up with fresh handmade corn tortillas aplenty. If you’re feeling really adventurous, go straight for the cabeza. Yes, it’s a baby goat’s head, right there on your plate, split down the middle so you can get to the sesos (brains). I’m not a fan of sesos, but these are the best I’ve had. The real treat is the goat’s tongue, which is so fantastic that you don’t want to compromise the taste by adding salsa.
The restaurant will take your plastic, but bring a few bucks to tip the band. Bring your family or friends along on a weekend, and you’ll all have great food and an authentic Mexican experience. I brought Jonathan Jones, chef of Beaver’s and El Patio to the restaurant, and he told me, “Of all the Mexican restaurants in the Houston area, this is the most Mexican.”
It would be tough not to agree with this. Enjoy the photos!
The following is a guest post from my friend Jeff Timpanaro. He’s got five kids, and he needs a new kidney due to an odd condition called Lupus. If you can’t give him a kidney, buy this guy a camera because his taco photos are terrible. Also, be sure and check out his website.
Enjoy! – G&T
It was one of those days that I’m embarrassed to admit how little I had to do. 3/5 of my kids were at school, while the other two were playing the blood-pressure-skyrocketing game of Hi-Ho-Cherry-O Confetti, where pea-sized cherries from the popular board game become projectiles, choking hazards, and eventually painful foot-lodgings. O childhood gaiety.
I had to intervene.
Intervention, of course, meant getting my ass of the couch and setting aside my laptop. With Twitter full of commuter rage and work litanies, and our living room raining tiny cherries, I hatched my plan like any good parent: ”TACO TRUCK!”
My Lil’ Taco Warriors (Lachlan, 3, and Vigo, 2) snapped to attention instantly upon hearing my plan. ”TACO TRUCK? FIRST WE HAVE TO GET A TORTILLA, AND THEN WE EAT A PIZZA AND A QUESADILLA.”
However vague their recollection of how this worked, our team was amped to have an activity . . . like Phineas & Ferb’s signature saying, “Hey, I know what we’re gonna do today!”
Remember Taco Truck Crawl #3? Matt Hardigree, news editor for the successful automotive site Jalopnik.com, brought his team along in two huge Ram 2500HD trucks. This morning Jalopnik told their story and included some helpful taco trucking instructions and great photos of the event. Check it out!
Taco truck culture is a way of life in Houston. For years, the general public and critics alike have taken great joy in discovering cultural foods that weren’t produced en masse, have never been reconstituted or processed in a factory, and aren’t squirted out of a tube.
The food in these real trucks are created by unsung chefs that come from countries you may be afraid of. These men and women have never been entertained by reality television shows about rich celebrities and their problems. Their teenage daughters have never asked them for fake boobs. They do not use organic soaps purchased from Whole Foods, Bed, Bath & Beyond, or a Victoria’s Secret catalog.
You see, true taqueros won’t be headlining in culinary magazines or appearing in New York Times photo slide shows. They succeed and fail based on our preferences, trials and recommendations. They don’t base their data from internet ads, consultants or think-tanks. They do not subscribe to foodie culture, and I’m certain that a rare few are aware of this or any other Houston food blog that promotes or denigrates them.
To make things more difficult for the proprietors of these authentic food trucks, big city officials constantly try to shut them down due to the restaurant lobby. Why would you pay $12.29 for one fajita taco at El Tiempo when you can get one for $1.75 at the Tierra Caliente truck (the first blog post on G&T) which is in the next door parking lot? You won’t, because Tierra Caliente was slammed by Houston’s inept Health Department and was forced to move to Washington Street (Tierra Caliente is now on West Alabama, in front of the West Alabama Ice House). For a better idea of mainstream Houston media’s take on taco trucks, take a look at J.C.Reid’s expose on the subject, and be sure to watch the video.
Taco Bell is owned by Yum! Brands , the largest restaurant company in the world. In addition to their recent market strategies such as getting 50 Cent to sue them, the “Drive-Thru Diet” campaign, starting a petition to have the Federal Reserve print more $2 bills, and most recently, their effort to replicate authentic taco trucks, Taco Bell has purchased a massive taco truck, which they are taking around the United States. Now they’d like to come to Houston.
This Taco Bell truck expects to drive into popular venues and give away free food items, such as the Volcano Taco which looks a lot like the box of CVS Crayolas that your date’s kid decided to leave in the pocket behind the passenger seat of your ’69 Caprice Classic for two weeks.
The Taco Bell Truck staff will be handpicked by some marketing prick in NYC that uses an emery board in staff meetings, pops his collar at night, and would never consider disassembling a washing machine to see what was wrong with it.
This week I’ve been working with Taconmadre, arguably the greatest taco truck business inside the 610 loop. When the Taco Bell truck attempts to set up shop here, Taconmadre’s magnificent green bus is going to park nearby. While Taco Bell hands out free tacos and gets their media coverage, the Big Green Bus will be right there, selling the real thing. Taco Bell might bring a crowd with their free tacos and tested marketing, but I’m hoping their patrons will see what’s going on next door and get a bite of a real taco.
Hopefully we can get the Taco Bell mega-truck to agree to a taste contest, but that wouldn’t make much sense on their end.
Taco Bell, I hope your folks have a great time in Dallas, but please don’t bother stopping in Houston.
UPDATE: A few hours after publishing this post, I received the following message from @TacoBellTruck on Twitter:
If you’ve come across previous G&T blog posts, you’re probably familiar of my acrimony towards Taco Bell. This rage is endless and everlasting, and keeps me alive.
“Think Outside the Bun”. Really? It sounds like something The Onion’s Jean Teasdale came up with. The kind of lady that knits Christmas ornaments and records soap operas with VHS tapes. A person that intentionally writes in Denelian.
Why do I despise Taco Bell so much? Hum.
1. I worked at a Taco Bell at the age of sixteen, and I saw dry, non-constituted bean powder for the first time.
2. Lettuce, tomatoes and a dollop of sour cream is not the definition of “Supreme” in my book.
3. Mild Sauce, Hot Sauce, and Fire Sauce are actually the same thing.
4. The male actors in their commercials, which represent their target demographic of 18-25, all wear knit stocking caps. Probably catering to potheads with munchies. Not that there’s anything wrong with that as a marketing standpoint, it works. But potheads wore stocking caps in that Dazed and Confused movie, which came out in 93, and was set in the 70′s. Potheads now wear Fidel Castro hats.
5. When I was growing up, there was a jukebox in the Taco Bell on Center Street in Deer Park, TX. I told some friends I’d play a few songs on it, and by some technical glitch, the jukebox played “I Touch Myself” by The Divinyls instead of “Mic Checka” by Das Efx, effectively canceling out my street cred and henceforth the rest of my teenage life until I bought a pistol and sold drugs.
This is the part where I should probably delve into the history of Taco Bell, explaining how an ex-Marine came up with this brilliant concept to make Mexican food more approachable to other white folks that were afraid of visiting Mexican taquerias. But you already know the story. We know what Taco Bell is. We understand that it is far from Mexican cuisine. And some will perpetually choose Taco Bell over a nearby taqueria, because they mistakenly believe that a corporate conglomerate is more concerned with food safety than a family-run truck, or maybe because they don’t want to get out of their car to order food for fear of getting robbed by a Mexican.
So it did come as great surprise to me that Taco Bell is now offering “Cantina Tacos”- their version of the Real Deal Holyfield. Taco truck tacos- complete with corn tortillas, chopped cilantro and onion, with a slice of lime. A real lime that was grown on a tree.
When I heard the news, it was as if I had initiated a chess match with Deep Blue, and after three moves, it was like, “You know, let’s just watch Power Rangers instead”.
You don’t expect Taco Bell to make a move like this. They are expected to come up with idiotic things, such as getting 50 Cent to sue them, or a “Drive-Thru Diet” campaign. I mean, seriously. Taco Bell is a company that gets Shaquille O’Neal to endorse their food. Their most recent ad campaign involves starting a petition to have the Federal Reserve print more $2 bills. Ad execs get paid for this.
As a self-proclaimed tacologist, it was my solemn duty to give these tacos the Pepsi Challenge. I stopped at the recently remodeled Taco Bell on Shepherd and Vermont and ordered all three Cantina tacos. My voice dripped with sarcasm as I ordered word-for-word:
“I’ll have the Premium Fire-Grilled Chicken, Premium Cut Carne Asada Steak and the Carnitas Shredded Pork Cantina Tacos with Fire Sauce and a super turbo sized Mountain Dew, bro”.
The nice young lady behind the counter obliged, and I brought the stuff home so nobody would see me there. I looked in the bag and saw three tacos wrapped in real aluminum foil. I grinned and shook my finger at the tacos.
“I see what you did there”.
Again, it is odd that Taco Bell made this decision, but at the same time, it is believable. Taco truck tacos are inexpensive, and so are their ingredients for the most part. Cilantro and onions are some of the cheapest produce you can find, and corn tortillas are less expensive than their flour counterparts. With the exception of avocado slices (which you generally see out West or near coastal towns), you can put a decent taco together for nickels with the bulk buying power that Yum! Brands has. The aluminum foil is probably the most expensive element. They have everything to gain from this decision, and nothing to lose.
I tried the chicken taco first, even though chicken tacos are a little odd for me to order. Reason is, if I want chicken tacos I’ll just buy a whole chicken from Pollos Asados el Regio and eat it with tortillas. I couldn’t tell if this was white or dark meat- it was kind of in between, like the inside of a McNugget. It had a nice color to it, with those charred stripes that make it look like it was once cooked on a grill or painted by some kind of grill-striping machine. Some chunky salsa verde would have gone nicely with it, but I doubt if Taco Bell knows what tomatillos are.
The beef taco wasn’t bad either. They were a bit stingy on the beef, and again, eating any kind of taco with Taco Bell’s Fire, Hot or Mild sauce is about as pointless as enrolling Justin Bieber in the Boy Scouts.
However…
I bit into the smokey, juicy and tender pulled pork taco as Johnny Cash played “When the Man Comes Around” in the background, hanging my head in shame as I chewed and swallowed my onions, cilantro and pride. I genuinely enjoyed this taco, as the images of the hundreds of hard working taqueros, shaking their heads in disapproval, flashed through my mind in order of their appearance in my traitorous life. I was disturbed by this, but then my mind halted with an epiphany.
You’re probably in Texas, so you’ve seen chili cook-offs and barbeque showdowns everywhere.
That’s right, Mr. Spell Checker. Barbeque with a Q in it.
Some good folks in Arizona are putting together the first annual Arizona Taco Festival, and challenging chefs and other culinary badasses across the nation to compete in one or all of four taco categories- beef, pork, chicken, and fish.
Why didn’t I think of this?
The event will eventually be a multi-city competition. The first event will be thrown in Scottsdale on Saturday, October 9, 2010. The grand prize is $7500.00.
The competition will also include a Sidecart Category that awards prizes for Best Salsa, Best Guacamole, Best Anything Goes Taco, Best Tamales, and Best Booth. Proceeds will go to Waste Not, a Phoenix charity that distributes perishable food to the homeless.
You can find the team entry form, sponsorship opportunities, and other pertinent info at their website. To keep up with new event info, follow @AZTacoFestival.
I’ll be one of the judges in this showdown. Let’s get some Texans out there to show them how it’s done.
When you pull into the parking lot of Connie’s Seafood, you’ll see an odd variety of vehicles. You might see a dropped Monte Carlo on dubs, a new Mercedes S500, and a Ram truck pinstriped with a pattern of Ram logos, parked next to one another. Blue collar families save their money to eat here as a special occasion, and white collars stop in as an escape from their sitcoms.
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