The ice storm came and went, and I took as much advantage of it as I could. I live across the bridge and causeway from Corpus Christi and didn’t have any work so pressing that I would have risked life and limb to cross them. So I closed up and settled in for a long cozy weekend with the wife and family. The Oscar nominations had been announced, and there were about five best picture nominees none of us had seen. It has been a perfect weekend, and it’s barely Friday afternoon.

So this morning, I dragged the dogs out into the cold and took some photos of the rare ice accumulation. It was treacherous in places where the ice had accumulated but no one was harmed, and after their walk and pee I put them back in their warm fresh indoor kennel and set out alone, because it is Friday and that means breakfast tacos.

In Portland, Texas, there are a few options for breakfast tacos, or rather, there are few options. None of the places here really compare to the middle-tier taquerias in Corpus Christi proper. There’s a place just a few blocks from my house that does drive through tacos and it often has cars and trucks blocking the street in both drive throughs. They move them through fast, but the tortillas are shelf, and so they don’t meet the criteria to be compared to decent CC taco shops. There’s another place across highway 181 that has all the trappings of a real taqueria, but their drive through invariably takes 45 minutes, even though there’s never more than two cars in line. There’s even a new spot that has opened right on the highway that has replaced Bad Brad’s Barbecue – which was unfortunately aptly named, though it might have been more apt if it were rearranged to Brad’s Bad Barbecue, but it isn’t open for breakfast. That leaves La Iguana #4, which has been around here longer than I have, and now has a liquor license. I didn’t order any margaritas this morning, but if I had they’d have been frozen, as was the sloped sidewalk into the place – even with the salt.

The Tacos: I ordered a chorizo & egg, and a barbacoa on flour. The chorizo and egg was strong, with a good chorizo to egg ratio.  It had the hallmarks of a good C and E, but the taco didn’t travel well, and it while the tortilla was bright red – it was a little too dry to be truly great. The barbacoa was lean and a little too dry as well. The tortillas seemed to be handmade, but by the time they’d made it into the house they must have travelled many places from their point of origin and their flavor and texture was less than fresh. The red salsa was good and filled with red chili.

I have eaten here out of necessity a few times and I always come away disappointed, though I can never quite put my finger on what it is about it that’s responsible. Today it might have suffered from the frigid ride home in my unheated pickup with the windows down so I could see out. Then again, it might have been as average if I’d have eaten in. If you’re trapped on the north side of the bay and you have a hankerin’ for a good breakfast taco, you might as well go to HEB, get the fixin’s, and make it yourself. If only HEB sold horchata.

Our Taco Award Winner for this week is:

Katy Mixon

It is hard to put into words the nature of the charm of Ms. Mixon. Is it her crooked smile? Her dimpled cheeks? The way she fills out a dress? There’s more to it. Her gen-you-ine southern accent and squeaky voice is at once charming and alarming, leaving you wondering why you don’t dislike it. Her over the top makeup reminds one of Tammy Faye, if Tammy Faye was young and bangin’ hot and not old, dead, creepy, and tragic.

Bred and buttered in Pensacola, Florida, Katy comes from a large family and set her sights on singing and acting at an early age, eventually graduating  Carnegie Mellon University‘s Drama Conservatory in Pittsburgh, performing at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, and eventually ending the pilgrimage in Los Angeles, where she made her bones with the Upright Cabaret, and had a few strikes with tv pilots before hitting it out of the park with her role as the April in HBO’s Eastbound and Down. I don’t know what it is about her I like, but I know I like it.

Offer includes 2 tacos, an audience with the ‘tacoteurs,’ and a free tacotopia t-shirt. Please redeem this offer at Whetstone Graphics on a Friday morning of your choice. Offer subject to cancellation by order of the wives of the tacoteurs.  Enter to win by emailing your name on the back of the NSFW finale of season 1 of Eastbound and Down to tacos@tacotopia.net.