We had breakfast with said fan and a co-worker this morning. I’d use their names but I didn’t get a release signed, and they work in the legal profession. I dare not expose the tacotopia empire to any undue liability. Suffice it to say they were both charming and are welcome to allow us to return the favor any Friday they’d like.

We’d planned on reviewing Brandy’s but I’d failed to do proper research ahead of time and when the gang all showed up we found a sign that said she opens at 7:30. This is the second time this has happened at Brandy’s.  At least now I know. Next week, 7:30, third time’s the charm.

Alma’s is on Ayers, near six points, near other tacotopia alums the Donut Hole and Chacho’s, across from the old Butter Krust bakery. In Austin, I was bussed out of my Burnett Junior High neighborhood to Martin. The bus would pass the Butter Krust bakery on the way before eventually making it’s way downtown past the capitol building and an ‘oriental massage’ parlor. I was young enough at the time to think both of those places were engaged in legitimate business. Like the one here in Corpus the bakery in Austin shut down in the mid 80’s, but I can remember the smell of the bread coming in through the school bus windows distracting every kid on the bus to pause their dice games and enhanced interrogation techniques to take in that glorious smell.

But we’re here to talk about tortillas, not bread; and Alma’s isn’t a bad place to get one. I’d been here a couple of times before, when it was named Anna’s.  I guess it wasn’t difficult to change the sign when the name changed. Alma’s has a lot of capacity though it was empty aside from us this morning. On other occasions I’ve often seen cop cars in the lot, and not for duty.

I got chorizo & egg, and a carne G as I do every Friday. They came out, big and hot, with the chorizo & egg closed and the guisada open to display a soupy deep brown peppered beef. It looked good, and it tasted as good as it looked. The red salsa was nothing special, but better than no salsa on the two tacos. The chorizo & egg was unlike any I’d seen before, with a magenta color that leeched into the eggs. It was very juicy, but the juice was amber, unlike the chorizo. It was good, whatever color it was. The tortillas themselves were really a pleasure to eat. They were big, tough but not dry, well done but not toasty, and stood up to the juicy fillings better than most. The coffee went down easy, and was refilled expeditiously.

This place is odd, but I like odd – especially when odd tastes good. It’s worth the trip.

From the Hat

Have you ever been in a car wreck, or something equivalent where everything moves in slow motion?  You really only have time to say “Oh Shit!” before the whole business is over, but it feels like it takes forever.  The anticipation of disaster stretched in time as you watch not in horror – there’s no time for that – but in that blank, WTF frame of mind as you hurtle toward the end.  It doesn’t really last long enough to get a good grasp of what’s going on and to form an opinion.  So if it is the end, you’ll go out in a daze, your last words a scatological epithet.  Not a very impressive ending, but getting a long, terrifying look at your demise wouldn’t be any better.

I mean, we’re getting that long, terrifying look right now in the Gulf of Mexico.  The numbers describing the amount of oil pouring into the gulf are rarely encountered in most people’s lives outside the weekly lotto drawing.  I watch daily as the oil is blown inexorably toward the coast.  Soon to come will be the oil-coated laughing gull getting his 15 minutes.  The Gulfo is a dynamic place, intimately connected to the rest of the world by currents that could transport the mess up the East Coast of Florida and beyond.  Hopefully they will staunch the leak quick – minimizing the damage to the gulf fisheries,  gulf coast ecosystems, and local, national, and global economies.

I also had that slow-motion feeling this morning.  I woke late, threw on some clothes, and rushed, half asleep, out the door to get downtown to Brandy’s.  I arrived, to find TSH and a pair of Taco Tourists standing in front of the locked door of Brandy’s.  We decided on a short trip to Alma’s on Ayers.  The place was large, but unoccupied.  We ordered coffee and I started to wake up.  The four of us sat, played 6-degrees, then got to the ordering.  I had a picadillo with cilantro y jalapenos frescos, and a nopalitos and egg.  Both were very big.  I took on the picadillo first.  The ground beef was served in a thicker-than-usual, browner-than-usual sauce and had a very promising proportion of potatoes.  It needed a bit of sal, but was savory and delicious.  Customarily, I devour one taco, then the next, but I held back the last bites of picadillo to savor later.  The nopalitos taco had some difficulty.  It was stuffed with eggs and a fair dinkum amount of cactus.  The taste was fine, but I think that the cactus juice might have watered the eggs just a bit, compromising the texture.   It was passable, but carried by the tortillas.  The flour tortillas were just how I like them – toothy and cooked to the cusp of crispy.  The salsa was fresh, had a respectable heat, and worked well with the tacos.  The service was very good.  The chef himself came out to inquire exactly how I wanted my jalapenos on the side, fresh or pickled and we never lacked for coffee.

Between the good breakfast, and the company of newly-met taco fans, I say it was a great start to the day.

Salud

This little blog is insignificant in the face for that continuing turmoil and strife so many see day to day. In the words of the late, immortal F. Zappa, “there’s no way to delay that trouble comin’ everyday.” Locally, Corpus Christi (aka Tacotopia) was named by Men’s Health magazine the fattest city in the US. While I question the statistical veracity of their half-baked math. Men’s Health is typically populated with articles detailing how this or that haircut on a chick means she’s wild in the sack so to take this ‘study’ as anything approaching accurate would be about as smart as taking any of tacotopia’s statistics seriously.

That said, there is no denying there is a problem with obesity in Tacotopia. I have a novel solution: eat less and exercise more. Tacos are not the problem, any more than are forks. Processed food might bear some of the blame, as well as sugar – especially in the form of HFCS. You find very little of this in breakfast tacos. Most of the ingredients are not far removed from their source. I’m not saying breakfast tacos are, in a word, healthy but I’d argue they beat the hell out of a McGriddle. Combined with exercise and moderation tacos can be a part of a healthy lifestyle. And ask yourself this: is a world without an occasional taco a world in which you would care to live? I say no.

The final stop on the Bald Ag tour is Daniela’s #1.  Located caddy-corner at Badlwin and Agnes this sprawling restaurant has some serious serving capacity.  When I showed up there were the police cruisers in the lot, always a good sign. The walls were peppered with photos of Zapata and Villa. The food came out and we got down to business.

The salsa roja was good, not too spicy but not too bland and with a nice flavor. The flour tortillas were fresh and hot, very light and were little match for the filling, falling apart before the tacos were finished. The chorizo & egg was fair, but rendered good with the salsa and the tortillas. The real star was the carne guisada which had a great texture, a nice rich flavor and even big chunks of bell pepper stewed in.

This place was pretty darned good. It is certainly worth a trip if you haven’t been there. I’d say it could go head to head with many of the most popular local favorites. The graph directly below reflects Daniela’s numbers.

From the Hat

Is it just me or does it seem to anyone else that the more time you have to do something, the longer it takes?  We tacoed early, so I’ve had plenty of time to produce some profound prose about pico… or picadillo.  But NOO!  I’ve even considered taking a right turn towards Damascus for inspiration, but I know that lightning waits down that road.  So I’ll do what any good Tacoteur in my position would do, I’ll get to the tacos.

Some of you know that TSH and I have been touring the Baldwin-Agnes Taco Nexus – sampling the wares, putting our 2-cents in.  And it’s been delicious.  We hit Daniella’s this time and did we hit paydirt!  I have to admit; I was hoping to get that mollejas taco for the perfect four-of-a-kind and was a bit disappointed when I discovered it wasn’t gonna happen.  After several rounds with the waitress, I began to feel I was getting a bit too “When Sally Met Harry” so I opted for a huevos con chicharrones a la Mexicana on flour and a barbacoa on corn con cebollas y cilantro. When the booty showed up, I was pleasantly surprised at the chicha taco.  It was BIG and stuffed with the goods.  I managed to hold up my lack-of-mollejas-disappointment until the first bite.  After that, I was hooked.  The taco was great. Plenty of fresh sliced jalapenos – perfectly spiced so that it didn’t need any salsa at all.  It was difficult not to scarf the thing down.  The chicharrones seemed to be of the dried variety, but they were prepared perfectly – with just the right mixture of chichas and eggs and vegetables.  It was all wrapped up in a damn fine flour tort to boot.  Outstanding.

The barbacoa taco was Tacotopia average.  Served piping hot, the aroma of barbacoa burst out of the foil and made friendly eyes at my nose from the get-go.  It was juicy, but not too fatty.  It needed salt, but the onion and cilantro were snappy-fresh and with a bit of a good, smoky salsa roja, it too was a sound offering.  The corn tort was thin, and perfectly round.  It was fresh and flavorful of corn.  I wouldn’t mind checking out their tortilla-making process.  I bet you could determine the value of pi to 10 digits by watching them work.

It was the first time I’d been to Daniella’s, and had no idea what to expect.  The food was good, the coffee was good and but for a slight mix-up with the taco delivery, the service was excellent and with a smile.  I’m still thinking that I could have taken a bite of Ian’s misdelivered C & E, and traded him for one of mine.  But I’m glad I didn’t because I probably would have given away that delightful chicharrone taco.  That would have sucked.

Salud

Sitting across the tracks on Old Robbstown, off Agnes, Chachos has an interesting atmosphere, with motorcycle posters and minature hand-made steel models, eschewing the typical traditional styling of most taco shops for a more modern and purely texas theme. The signage is some of the best sign-writing I’ve seen in this town. The entrance is flanked by an impressive array of gumball machines.

I showed up with Matt the Hoople, and this was the rare occasion where I was at the rendezvous point before the Hat. On a side note, I am back in the dodge in case you were wondering, and expect another 100000 miles from it. My wife is in Chicago, and I’m on school bus detail while she’s away which is good and bad for Hoops – good ‘cause he gets sit-down tacos on a Friday morning before school, bad because he’s got to get up early for them. I didn’t have to get up early, hadn’t slept in fact.  I was running a copy job all night and barely made it home in time to change clothes and splash some water on my face before I whisked the ready kid out the door and into the heart of taco country.

We live in Portland (no not Oregon or Maine, Texas dammit!). The closest restaurant to my house is a drive through only taco stand with two windows on opposite sides and both drive throughs are often found spilling out into traffic on weekend mornings. And while I like convenience (and some killer horchata) I almost never get tacos from here because the tortillas aren’t fresh.  There’s another taco joint here, I think it’s called plaza Guadalajara, but they’ve got the same problem. Then there’s la Iguana, ditto. Other than that there’s Taco Bell. This is why you haven’t seen a review of any taquerias in Portland. I expect when the pickin’s get thinner I’ll do a Portland roundup but no time soon. So we met this morning out on Agnes for another week.

On to the tacos. I had, as I always do, a chorizo & egg and a carne guisada. The tacos were slightly larger than average, and presented in the double D formation. The chorizo & egg was not spectacular; it was light on the chorizo. The tortillas were quite good. I suspect they aren’t made on site, but were still pretty fresh and dense – strong enough to stand up to any filling thrown at them. They also had a bit of flavor to them, that could be tasted even through the stronger flavors on top of them. We were given both green and red salsa.  Both were chopped fine, not quite pureed, and both were very hot. I choked up on the green. The flavor of both were also good, and revived the less than lively chorizo and egg. The carne guisada, on the other hand, was excellent. Especially with the Chachos tortillas and the killer salsa. The coffee tasted a little burnt, but was plentiful and refilled frequently.

Chachos is well worth the trip.

From the Hat

Life is good.  Today’s taco tour takes us back to the Baldwin/Agnes area for our third competitor in the Taco Frag.  I’m always relieved to find more cop cars than you can count on one hand in the parking lot of a taqueria. I mean, it’s much more likely that their presence is due to good food than to a hostage situation.  TSH was there when I arrived and since he wasn’t sitting on his hands in the back of a cruiser, or hiding from gunfire behind the open door of his mighty Dodge Ram, I figured the coast was clear.

My earliest memory of this building was when it was the Manhattan Steak House.  I’m dating myself because it hasn’t been a steak house for a very long time.  The building fell into disrepair and became the target of vandals after the Manhattan closed.  In the recent past, the place has been several Mexican restaurants, none of which lasted very long.  The current incarnation is as a Chacho’s.

So far I’ve been on a roll.  I’d been able to order mollejas tacos, and barbacoa tacos at both of the previous contestants.  I wondered whether I could keep up my streak since not all taquerias have mollejas on the menu. But this is Tacotopia and sure enough, both tacos were listed.  The place was comfy and even I could tell the quality of the signage and the motorcycle motif to the interior was kind of cool.  Not often does one get to gander at the gams of some gal splayed on a motorcycle while eating tacos, but it worked.  I was far enough away that I couldn’t tell who the blonde beauty on the bike was, but Matt the Hoople, who also ordered Mollejas, thought it was Paris Hilton. I liked it better not knowing so I didn’t take a closer look.  But I did take a close look at the tacos.

Both were ample.  A peek at the innards of the innards taco found some good-looking mollejas.  Like El Charro across the street, they were fried to perfection.  The texture was good, again like a perfectly-fried oyster, but they weren’t quite up to those of their neighbor.  But they could be.  The frying oil was a bit past prime.  There was a hint of burn to it, not too bad, but it was there.  And I hate to garner a reputation as a hater, but the onions were just short of as fresh as they could be.  Neither were terrible violations, but this is serious business.  The barbacoa, was Tacotopia-good. It had that cow head flavor, (mostly due to more cow head fat) found in a good barbacoa.  It also had a noticeable barbacoa aroma that spurred my desire to dig in.  Both were served on really good flour torts.  Sorry corn tortilla lovers, no hand-made corn tarps here.  But the flour tarps were dense and tasty and more than up to the task of keeping the goodies corralled to the very end.  The salsas verde and roja were excellent.  The green had a sharp twang to it as well as plenty of heat and the red, while not as hot, was plenty spicy.  Both were fresh and delicious.   I’m hoping Chacho’s sticks around the neighborhood.  They make a mighty fine breakfast.

Salud