In August of ’09, Jeff Balke wrote a great blog post about Washington Avenue in the Houston Heights, which coined and immortalized the term “douchefication”. If you cruise down Washington around midnight, you will find a large quantity of wealthy and intoxicated patrons that listen to pop music intentionally and think they can tell the difference between Grey Goose and Stolichnaya in a Long Island Iced Tea.
The good bars and music venues are long gone and have been replaced with trendy, packed dance clubs with unimaginative bartenders and top 40 remixes playing on booming sound systems intended as a conversation preventative.
In the last month or two, Taqueria Tierra Caliente has changed their location to Washington, and a new player has moved into town: Taqueria Maya Quiche. Stationed in front of The Lot, this truck has been drumming up a good bit of business since its arrival.
I had never ventured into The Lot before so I thought I’d case the joint. I tried to ignore the two straight girls making out at the bar, but they were in between me and the bartender. The speakers thumped some kind of Michael Jackson techno remix butchery that made my stomach turn. I had to shout.
“AHEM. EXCUSE ME, MA’AM”.
No response.
“MIND IF I ORDER A DRINK?”
“Oh thanks baby! I’ll have a Patrón shot and she’ll have a Grey Goose and Red Bull! Hee-Hee!”
As an amateur anthropologist, I opted to converse with her in her native language by executing a vintage 1991 Shannen Dougherty eye roll.
Some soulless doucheketeer soaked in Axe Body Spray bumped into me, scratching my arm with the rhinestones on his shirt. I tried to stare him down but he was wearing sunglasses.
Sunglasses.
I left the bar before I could get myself into trouble. Taqueria Maya Quiche was in full effect. A dozen wobbling patrons lined up in front of the joint, so I cut in line and ordered some tacos, knowing that none of these guys have ever been in a fist fight in their lives for fear of messing up their hair or damaging their jewelry. They’ve never even watched a Western.
There’s a funny thing about Washington Avenue. I’ve noticed that nobody fights. They will push each other around, yell, take their shirts off while waiting for their buddies to pull them away, but nobody swings. These are a bunch of hand models that practice suggestive faces in the mirror before going out for the evening. They use daily facial moisturizer.
Maya Quiche is an unusual name for a taco truck, right? That’s because you’re thinking of quiche, that awful egg pie thing that old people make for breakfast. That’s not it. The Quiché are a Mayan people from the highlands of Guatemala, mostly from Chichicastenango, or Chichi for short. Guatemalans are just like Mexicans except shorter.
I ordered three tacos al pastor. If you don’t know what those are by now, you’ve got some catching up to do, homie. I hoped they’d have some unique Mayan cuisine or tamales wrapped in banana leaves, but no such luck. I ordered con todo, “with everything”. At most taco trucks, this means they’re going to put fresh chopped white onions and cilantro on your taco. If the taco truck is on Washington Street, I’ve learned that the demands of the audience dictate what goes on your taco.
I can only imagine the remonstrance of the Washington crowd when the truck first opened.
“Where is the lettuce? Where is the tomato? Where is the CHEESE, and why aren’t you playing KE$HA?”
I’ve said before to be warned of taco trucks that acknowledge gringo-ism by replacing onions and cilantro with lettuce and tomato. To placate the hordes, Maya Quiche adds everything to their tacos. Cilantro, onions, lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese. And you know what? It’s pretty good. The pork was on the dry side, but when you add all of those fresh elements to it and dump some salsa on top, you won’t notice. The red salsa was just how I like it. Bright red and filled with jalapeño seeds, with an ideal texture. Although the meat is the core of the taco, you’ve got to realize that the pastor test is the toughest to pass. I’m guessing that if I had ordered a fajita taco, it would have passed with flying colors.
The beauty is, if you’re in this location you don’t need to serve good tacos. You could sell cans of Spam for five bucks a pop if you were so inclined. These jokers will buy anything. Maya Quiche serves a fine taco with quality ingredients- even though they don’t have to. To someone who has spent the last three hours on the dance floor guzzling shots of high end sipping tequila with a salted rim and dry-humping girls who have been giving him bad phone numbers, this is a king’s feast.
I continued down Washington, seeing people pee in alleys and argue about reality shows. Two guys leaned into the passenger window of a car, sharing a box of pizza and a bottle of Grey Goose with the bar spigot still on it. One guy on the street opted to remove his shirt and tie it around his head. I mean, that actually made sense to him.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike these folks. They’re not too different than me, really- just younger, drunker, richer, and they use hair dryers. I had a good time hanging around on Washington, but I’ve got to admit I felt a bit smug, for one simple reason.
I know better places to hang out.
The facts remain. Some girls need a place to make out with each other to attract guys with Prada shoes or an Audi key chain, and some guys need a place to dress like characters in The Fast and the Furious and break up pseudo-fights that would have never occurred. I don’t hold it against them- it’s not their fault they have never spot welded, caught a saltwater fish, or changed their own tire.
For close to a year, I’ve been employing different tactics to get Chamillionaire, a successful Houston-based rap artist, to follow me on Twitter. I tried tweeting him several times, and I tried approaching him through his online forum, which was eventually shut down. Paul Wall, another successful rap artist from Houston (and friend of Chamillionaire), started following me on Twitter last week, and right then I thought I had it in the bag. But when you’ve got close to 80K followers, I guess it’s tough to read every message you get. I had to try another angle, so I went to see Chamillionaire and Paul Wall perform at the House of Blues in Downtown Houston in person.
Obviously I couldn’t go talk to him, so I stopped at CVS and picked up a posterboard and a fat Sharpie, then crudely fashioned a sign that said “FOLLOW @GUNSANDTACOS ON TWITTER.”
Since I would be holding up this sign in front of a bunch of angry people, I wrote “GunsandTacos.com” on the back of the poster so they would have something to read while I was blocking their view. I held it up for most of the show, and worked my way through different parts of the crowd to ensure full visibility. Note to self: It is difficult to drink a beer when you are holding up a sign with both hands.
The show was sold out and packed to the hilt. Here are a few photos.
The sign worked out to an extent. He once asked the crowd how many of them used Twitter. It didn’t garner a huge response, but Cham asked House of Blues to turn the lights on. He did this so that all of the Twitter users could take photos with their camera, which I thought was a pretty awesome thing to do. Toward the end of the show,Chamillionaire gave props to “The guy with the sign, Gus or whatever”.
He’s still not following me on Twitter, but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up yet.
I submitted a taco photograph to the online New York Times for a reader-driven feature, and they published it on their website. This was taken with a Canon G10 I borrowed from a friend. I like this photo because the whole image appears to be in focus. The slight haze you see is the steam coming off of these superbad Taconmadre tacos. Check it out!
Fancy people call them crêpes. I call them pancake tacos. Either way, the French just found a bunch of pretentious things like pears and berries and goat cheese, rolled it in a pancake, and called it something other than a taco so they could take credit for inventing a taco.
Just because you wear turtleneck sweaters, tortoise shell glasses and cologne I can’t pronounce, does not mean you invented the taco.
That being said, pancake tacos are really delicious. If you’re in Houston, stop by Melange Creperie on Westheimer and Taft (in Mango’s parking lot), and a nice fella named Buffalo Sean will throw one or two together for you. No, he will not be wearing a turtleneck.
While touring with the SpicyRV.com crew on our RV trip to Albuquerque, NM, we stopped at a venue called Lucha Libre Mexicana in El Paso, where I pursue my lifelong dream of wrestling a luchador.
Along with James Beck Jr, Paul Sedillo and Jason Russo, I’m headed to Albuquerque, New Mexico to attend the 22nd annual National Fiery Foods & BBQ Show starting on March 5 in a massive tour bus, because wasting gasoline is like, Steve McQueen awesome.
I’ll be regularly updating their blog and the @SpicyRV Twitter account, so check out SpicyRV.com and add it to your RSS feed for the next week or two.
Paul will be capturing the trip on video and dropping it on the site so all the viewers can see what kind of shady business we’re getting into.
James Beck Jr. will be eating things most people can’t comprehend (myself included), and at a major international hot sauce festival like this, there’s no telling what folks are going to try to feed him. It’ll get interesting.
Since we’ll likely be heading through El Paso, hopefully we’ll come across a taco stand or two as well.
And if we’re that close to Mexico, it’s going to be mighty tough keeping my ass out of Juarez. Just sayin.
Last week I heard about an event at Club Status in Houston’s Midtown district where Chingo Bling would be hanging out. You probably know who he is, but in case you live with your mom and listen to Foreigner albums all day, Chingo is a prolific rap artist who has corroborated with Nelly, Chamillionaire and Paul Wall, and he happens to live in Houston, Texas. His most recent album is titled “Me Vale Madre“.
I wanted to be prepared for this moment, so two days before this endeavor, I bought a $15 pager from a little shop on Bellfort. Out in Channelview (on my way to Karanchos), I picked up two strips of Black Cats and a length of fuse. If you’re a mercenary like myself, you know how handy Black Cats can be in a tactical situation of importance such as this.
If you live in Houston, you know how Yellow Cab is. There may seem to be other independent cab services, but they’re all owned by Yellow Cab, and you can never depend on a ride. To counter this, I forged a relationship with a Yellow Cab driver I’ll call “Bob”, since that is his real name. He talks too much, but he’ll pick me up anytime I want, 24 x 7. In return, I have to play harmonica along with whatever album he decides to play. Which is cool unless he’s in a reggae kind of mood. It’s really hard to burn up a blues harp to reggae music, I’m just saying.
Chingo Bling and Roxxi Jane
Bob brought me to the joint around 8 or so, and I waited for Chingo Bling to show up. The bar was blue, and when I turned around and looked again, it was red. It took me a while to figure out that the bar changed colors. Freaky. There weren’t any barstools at the color-changing bar, just an array of VIP sections against the wall.
Hector the bartender explained that the silver buckets were for champagne, and no, I could not use it as an ice bucket for my Lone Star Beer.
Chingo Bling arrived with an entourage of several beautiful women, and four giant bodyguards that looked like they ate a bowl of bullets for breakfast and seasoned them with pepper spray. I was prepared for the bodyguards, because I was on a mission, which I’ll share with you.
If you don’t know about #TTC3, the Houston Chowhound’s third annual Taco Truck Crawl on April 10, you must be playing Mass Effect at your sister’s house and trying to figure out why nobody is interested in sharing the box of 50 Chicken McNuggets you fervently saved up for. Hell, you’re probably asking for that godawful barbecue sauce. You probably own more than two cats. Get a hold of yourself, cat man.
Long story short,my plan was to get Chingo Bling to hang out at TTC3, hell or high water.
Once Chingo seemed somewhat approachable, I dialed the number to the pager I had given Bob. He lit the fuse to the Black Cats and tossed them underneath one of the nice cars that the valet guys tend to park up close to the front of the joint.
My plan was for the bodyguards to go nuts and fly out of the place so I could get Chingo Bling alone long enough to make my case. The firecrackers started popping. Instead of freaking out, the seasoned and wary bodyguards, who surprisingly knew the difference between gunshots and Black Cats, casually stepped outside to check it out. All but one.
Steph Marie and Chingo Bling show me the correct way to throw dueces.
Anyway, this was my chance. I approached Chingo, and as the Incredible Mexican Hulk stood in my path, Chingo called him off in Spanish. I proceeded to introduce myself to Chingo. He took his sunglasses off, ordered me a Shiner, and gave the group of hot chicks a dismissive motion so we could have a private chat.
He came closer so I could hear him over the thumping dance music.
“What’s with the Black Cats, dumb ass?”, he politely inquired .
Another bodyguard appeared about five paces away on my right.
I considered explaining, but decided to get to the point.
He cracked a smile and introduced me to the ladies.
Roxxi Jane (@Suprlatina on Twitter) is a dance/pop singer who has recently been working her way to the pop charts. You can listen to her mixtape, or wait for her widely anticipated album, Everybody Loves Pink. Our conversation quickly went to taco trucks, and she told me about some of her favorites.
I was also happy to meet Steph Marie Tunchez (@OStephy), a mariachi singer and violinist who I’ve been following on Twitter for some time. She also knows her tacos, and she suggested a few places that weren’t on my map.
I came across this unusual taco truck in a rural area north of the Houston metro. It was impossible to get to, in this odd corner where Huffmeister and Hempstead Highway converge. The unpaved driveway was situated in a manner where you couldn’t get to it without breaking a couple of traffic laws.
It was a beautiful sunny and cool Texas winter day. A huge hand painted sign read, “TACOS OPEN”. Along with the taco truck, this lot contained an abandoned snow cone stand and a beautiful blue vintage Mustang with a torn, battered tarp obscuring it just enough so that I could clearly see blue, chrome, and awesome.
A long-legged black chicken doted around, searching for gizzard grit amongst a pile of bottle caps. My dining companion, who we will call Penelope Cruz, entertained the thought of ordering a chicken taco just to see what would happen. I explained to her that it was probably a fighting breed rather than a poultry bird. She was impressed by my vast knowledge of avian genetics.
Penelope Cruz then tried to befriend the hen, and if you don’t know chickens, trying to play with a chicken is kind of like playing that pop-up Orbitz game where you try to hit home runs over and over again. Or watching Ghost Hunters.
I ordered fajita and pastor (pork) tacos and a bottle of Joya; a grapefruit-flavored drink similar to Fresca but only distributed in Mexico. You can kill four men with this thick glass bottle before it breaks.
Four.
I once learned a valuable lesson about these non-twist bottle caps. Back when I was exploring Tijuana looking for a place to live, I came across this seedy bar called Carmen’s where there were people sleeping on the tables. I bought a raffle ticket for a buck or two, and won a bottle of El Presidente brandy, accompanied by a large glass bottle of Coke. I put the edge of the bottle on the bar and tried to ‘slap off’ the bottle cap with no luck.
A guy that looked exactly like Danny Trejo snatched the Coke bottle from my hand. I thought he was going to swing it at me, but instead he snapped off the bottle cap with his teeth and handed it back to me in one fluid motion.
It was the coolest thing I had ever seen in real life.
A bottle of brandy and a few beers later, I thought I’d give it a try. Why not? Uncle Sam was paying for my dental work anyway. I bought a Pacifico, gripped the edge of the bottle cap by my teeth and…
CRACK!
I broke the entire neck of the bottle off , cutting my face pretty good in the process. I spent the rest of the night holding a wad of napkins against my face and dripping blood and beer on the floor, reveling in the fact that I now looked like a local in this shady Tijuana cantina.
I have since mastered the art of opening bottles with my teeth, but I prefer to use a bottle opener.
Anyway, back to the taco truck. A screened-off dining area was handcrafted around the south side of the trailer, and the interior was outright quirky. Framed religious prints, a combination of plastic and live plants, and an awkwardly situated Foosball table were the key design elements here.
Wooden seagulls were strung up across the ceiling, each with a fancifully-folded dollar bill in its beak. It was all pink, yellow, and girly looking, like a blender full of Barbies.
The gal in the trailer dinged a bell to let me know the tacos were ready. The sliced limes were larger than key limes, but smaller than your average lime found in your local market. Both the pastor and the fajita were dry and bland, to the point that saturating them with lime juice provided only slight improvement. The red salsa was a dark maroon, and had an unwelcome sweetness that had to be countered with the application of table salt. The salsa verde was bland and uninspired. Yes, I am using the term “uninspired” when discussing taco truck salsa. So what.
Ruby’s Taqueria has an extensive menu, and before dogging it too much I’d like to stress the fact that a lame taco truck taco is still five times better than any Taco Bell menu item. If you’re in the area, I implore you to stop in just to take a closer look at the dining area. It’s something special, and I wish I hadn’t fought sundown to grab the few photos I did. Ruby’s is open 24/7.
Now if you’ll excuse me, someone’s got to teach Penelope Cruz how to hotwire a Mustang.
The Houston Chowhounds, a 700+ group of chefs, food industry folks, food bloggers and food adventurers, are presenting their third annual Taco Truck Crawl. It’s kind of like an amusement park for grownups, except there are no rollercoasters and fewer knife fights. And I’m running the show.
For those who know, the last Taco Truck Crawl was a load of fun for everyone who attended … except for that one guy that got a head injury from a pack of Chicles launched from a slingshot. There were around 100 in attendance last time (not that anyone actually took the time to count heads), and I’m guessing there will be a few more this time. We will be visiting a lot of taco trucks and/or restaurants in the Houston area and beyond.
29-95.com will be sponsoring the event with a party bus, with a general rule prohibiting the consumption of alcoholic beverages that we will collectively ignore like we did last time. If you’d prefer to caravan or car pool instead, feel free. I’ll be on the party bus if I’m not carpooling with Chamillionaire.
The illustrious event will be held on Saturday, April 10. This will not be on a Sunday, which it was last time because a certain really famous unnamed pastry chef named Plinio had to work on Saturday and asked us to do it on Sunday, and then he did not show up for the Taco Truck Crawl anyway. (Thanks, Plinio, for ruining my life.)
The list of taco trucks we will visit is shrouded in mystery and will only be divulged by a secret handshake or by discreetly slipping a ten in my pocket. I can tell you that on this list is Karanchos in Channelview, which I am probably a bit too excited about.
Be sure to bring lawnchairs, ice chests, beer, drinks, cash and sombreros.
We also will have some kind of afterparty. I don’t know where yet. Probably somewhere with lasers or a donkey.
Again, this is a free event, but we’d like to get you to RSVP here so we can get a good idea how many are coming along. Not a member of Chowhounds? Shoot me an email and I’ll save you a spot on the bus.
Note: Comments are disabled on this post, but please feel free to comment here.
I left the bar before I could get myself into trouble. Taqueria Maya Quiche was in full effect. A dozen wobbling patrons lined up in front of the joint, so I cut in line and ordered some tacos, knowing that none of these guys have ever been in a fist fight in their lives for fear of messing up their hair or damaging their jewelry. They’ve never even watched a Western.
I continued down Washington, seeing people pee in alleys and argue about reality shows. Two guys leaned into the passenger window of a car, sharing a box of pizza and a bottle of Grey Goose with the bar spigot still on it. One guy on the street opted to remove his shirt and tie it around his head. I mean, that actually made sense to him.
