About a year ago I noticed they were redoing their sign. As someone who is always excited by activity on the taco scene I was intrigued. A year later and they’ve changed their name, presumably their owner, and that sign was never finished. The Hat actually suggested this place to me, noting there was a flower painted over a crack on the plate glass window. Classic.

This may not be the ideal way for this restaurant to reinvent itself, but everyone has to work with whatever is available to them.  Apple was on the brink of collapse in the mid 90’s before Steve Jobs came back to oversee the most amazing corporate reinvention in history, and in the process reinvented the music marketplace and the phone. It only took him one liver and half a pancreas, and an applecart full of black mock turtlenecks.

There are others who seek to reinvent themselves. Madonna has reinvented herself so many times that she’s ended up looking like the only thing she hasn’t been before – a surly longshoreman in drag. There are others who reinvent themselves with the help of a third party: Woody Allen via Soon-Yi Previn, Lance Armstrong via Michele Ferrari, Mickey Rourke via Darren Aronofsky, and Britney Spears via Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson has done some reinventing of himself lately, or perhaps he’s just let us see behind the curtain, or he’s trying to reinvent douchebaggery.

So we met up at the joint and got out taco on. While it looks pretty bad on the outside, it’s only kinda bad on the inside. The carpet looks like it’s been on the slab in a quick-lube for the last 10 years, but the tables were clean and well appointed and with the big windows there was a bright and lively ambience.

I ordered the usual – a carne guisada and a chorizo & egg. Here’s the rundown: the C&E was bland and light on the C, the C&G was average, the coffee was fair. The service was quick. The salsas were great. The tortillas were handmade but on the low end of the scale for handmade tortillas. A handmade tortilla is always better than a shelf tortilla, but we can do better in Tacotopia.

The experience altogether, in spite of the less-than-stellar fare, was quite pleasant. As always there was good company, and I do love the end of the week with a side of tacos even if the weekend will only be more work but without customers. I am a fan of the aesthetic of the underdog. I like my celebrities slightly flawed. I like my movies dark. I like Corpus Christi because of the tragic beauty of leopard and downtown, not in spite of it. As such I like looking out on the gritty early morning on Leopard, one of the most used up streets in the city. For tacos, you could do better (in Tacotopia that is) but it was not a bad experience. All the elements were there. Fresh hot tortillas, good service, great salsa, an interesting view. Maybe after the new staff doesn’t clean the kitchen for a few months the fillings will have a little more flavor.

From the Hat

Here it is Jim!  It’s all my fault.  I’m sure that Taco Show Host has his weekly contribution to that Grand Idea that is Tacotopia in the can.  Waiting…impatiently…for Tacotopia to hit the presses.  Well, I’m to blame.  I’d like to say that I’m late ‘cause I had to go sign for my Lotto winnings up in Austin but if that really happened, Taco Blanca and I would just disappear.  Or maybe I was on the phone because Alton Brown had a question about frying a turkey.  But no, I was working…Like everyone else I know.

This is where I’d wax poetic if I had a poetic bone in my body – some sparse sprinkling of sap that would convey my state of being, but still be about tacos.  Not the easiest thing to do sometimes.  The weekly Tacotopia gig is a down-home, good-time, relaxification and I dig it.  It’s Sanctum Sanctorm in life.  That sparkle of Yin in the Eye of Yang that spices up the end of the week – this week better than others as we were graced by the presence of Taco Blanca.  I know this is a taco blog, but it’s worth mentioning that her $3.00 Migas a la Mexicana must have been 3 eggs with serious homemade corn tortillas and beans.  She seemed to savor it like it was the real deal.

I on the other hand ordered tacos, as is a Tacoteur’s responsibility.  A nopalitos con huevos on flour, and a barbeque on corn.  Now I must say up front, my taste buds were configured for barbeque – brisket.  I got barbacoa con cilantro y  cebollas.  Nopalitos and egg tacos are the most misunderstood of all tacos.  Even most purveyors of the prickly pear guide you towards an “a la Mexicana”.  But to truly appreciate the cactus taco, you have to meet it head on – well, with eggs.  This taco was mostly good.  Not a resounding “Good!”, but not bad.  The nopalitos egg combination worked, the pickled pads were plentiful and spiced with a good heat.  There were plenty of eggs, but the tarp was doughy.  Definitely an anchor in the ensemble.  The barbacoa was Tacotopia average.  The barbacoa you can get at most taquerias in town.  And again, my tort was poorly executed.  Corn, okay, kinda like pizza and …  But this was not exciting.  Both tacos were aided immensely by addition of salsa.  Torres de Jalisco had two very good salsas.  The rich red was robust and fresh with onion, garlic and tomato.  Just enough pico to announce its presence.  But the green was delicious.  Fresh pepper and spices, that made themselves known with a vigor.  The tacos would have been seriously dissed without one or the other.  But tacos are a blend, best when all parts contribute to the fullest to sate the appetite.  The service was excellent and the coffee was good, so I enjoyed the experience.  Could be I’m just disappointed that the newest taqueria within walking distance from my house is not a home run.  I’ll give ‘em another chance.

Salud

I’ve got it good, and even though the strain of operating a small business during a recession in a city where recession is piled upon existing recession (re-recession?) is difficult to manage some days, there are always folks who have it worse. As Marc Maron said to Dane Cook on his podcast WTF, “Every day is a heroic struggle for most people.” And though I’m not doing anything truly heroic, like disarming IEDs or exposing abuse of children, I do sleep well at night after a long day of work, and I do look forward to that most perfect of meals on Friday morning in our city, Tacotopia, the home of the best breakfast tacos in the world.

So the Hat and I met up at Acapulco #2 this morning, and this would actually be our second time to try and write this up (the first attempt was aborted after a disasterous coffee deficiency related mixup. This time looked like it might end up the same way when after waiting for 15 minutes for the other we spotted each other waiting for the other in separate booths.

We consolidated our booths and ordered. It’s easy to see how we missed each other, the booths are enclosed by wood or etched glass floor to ceiling – providing some real privacy. The atmosphere is mostly related to train kitsch, I’d guess left over from the previous occupant, with some 70s stained glass around so that it really invokes an atmosphere of 1976 – although the aroma of the place has not weathered as well as the decor.

I had a chorizo & egg, and a carne guisada – with coffee. The food came out in short order, and the Hat seemed to be hell bent on having as many different salsas on the table as possible, ending up the the standard in a ketchup squeezer, a super hot of the shelf jalapeño salsa, a pickled but ostensibly in-house red super hot, and a ranchero for the faint of heart. I tried both the reds, and satisfied with the house standard applied it liberally to my two tacos.

They were both good, each on a fair homemade flour tortilla. The tortillas weren’t outstanding but a damn sight better than anything off a shelf. Carne guisada, after you’ve tried 50 or 60 different ones in as many weeks, doesn’t vary that much – at least in this town. There’s a continuum of red to brown that usually reflects the amount of cumin used in the cooking. This one sat squarely in the middle, and the chunks of meat were slightly larger and more plentiful that many. The meat was a bit chewy and dense, but not in a bad way.

The chorizo & egg has a powerful and sultry flavor, like Penélope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, a taco unconcerned with the expectations of people who don’t have the vision or appetite to appreciate what it has to offer. This was the star of the breakfast, but the cast had another great supporting player – the coffee. With nothing but food service plastic thimble creamers and caked in the diner dispenser sugar this coffee held it’s own, frequently bolstered by the expeditious waitress.

A cornerstone of a good breakfast taco is good conversation and we tried to make sense of the mess that is being thrown at the gulf coast. I talked about my brilliant idea for inductive automobile infrastructure to solve the battery issue with electric vehicles (some jerks beat me to it), and Kevin talked about the dearth of decent tacos in Fort Worth. Satisfied with the fare we hoped it would satisfy the craving for tacos for another week.

From the Hat

“Two shitty tacos for seven bucks, where t f r u?”  Yes, good tacos are not a given.  This totally appropriate quote was from Taco Show Host upon receiving my picture of the menu from a downtown Fort Worth eatery.  The tacos were so tempting that I opted for a seven dollar bowl of steel cut oatmeal instead.  It just goes to show you that we live in a great place where one can find a delicious taco for a reasonable price – and just about anywhere in the city to boot.  These facts should not be taken for granted.

One shouldn’t take airline travel for granted either.  All know about the recent hurricane, Alex.  While I don’t want one to spank the Sparkling City, I have to admit that I love weather – tropical weather especially.  And when the Shedevil in el Gulfo spurred tornado warnings in Tacotopia, the airlines cancelled all flights to the area.  So instead of good, cheap tacos and exciting weather, I had crappy, expensive food and drizzly, grey, boredom.  I was never so glad to be back.  While I was too damned tired to do much of anything when I got home, (Thank goodness for Taco Blanca’s delicious spaghetti and meat sauce.) I knew that I’d be participating in Tacotopia’s breakfast ritual the next day and so slept like a baby.

I was primed for today’s adventure and hoping for a gulp of gastronomic greatness.   I’ll try my best not to overrate today’s taco treats.  I worry that so many days stranded in downtown Bad Food, messed up my calibrations and almost anything will get a good rating.  Taco Show Host and I ended up at Taqueria Acapulco at the corner of Weber and Gollihar.  We’d been before, but due to a transportation SNAFU, weren’t able to properly review the place.  I ordered two tacos on flour, a papas con chorizo, and a machacado y huevos a la Mexicana.  The machacado taco wasn’t a home run, because it started a bit bland.  But there was plenty of the carne seco, and with the addition of a tiny bit of salt, the taco brightened right up.  The vegetables in the Mexicana were fresh, but might have benefitted from a bit more serrano to the mix.  (Maybe due to the fact that I had trouble getting my heat on in downtown Fort Worth.)  While I’m on the subject of heat, Acapulco served two salsas, a Ranchero, and a fresh red, both good, but neither packed any heat.  I asked the pretty waitress if they had anything Really Hot.  She developed a mischievous smile and disappeared into the kitchen, only to return with a commercial bottle of something green, and a smooth puree-like red salsa made on site.  The red is definitely worth asking for.  Blazing hot, vinegary, with the texture reminiscent of mole, it didn’t take much to get the taco where I wanted it.  Satiated, I passed on the commercial green.  My second taco was the morning star – plenty of potatoes and rich, red, vinegary goodness that is chorizo.  The potatoes were cooked to the perfect consistency and the spicy, oily chorizo really hit the spot.  The flour torts were good – fluffy and light.  Backed up by really good café coffee and conversation the meal recalibrated me back into control, readying me for the day.  I’ll be back.