La Iguana #4 – Snow Day

100 5th Avenue • Portland, TX 78374 • (361) 643-2063

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.

Comments
  • Taco Blanca says:

    No Carne G? Glad to know there is at least some water in the desert!

  • Megan K says:

    Recently found your blog, have been perusing the archives. Completely in love with it and happy to find someone equally obsessed with the taquerias around these parts. That gushing aside, I feel I must quibble just a little with your Portland assessment.

    First, the drive-through taco stand (Tapatio): although they don’t make their tortillas on site, I wouldn’t exactly call them off-the-shelf. They’re from City Tortilla in Ingleside, which makes some pretty damn tasty tortillas for those of us who don’t have the equip or where-with-all (or abuelita) to make them them at home. And for a strictly drive-through place, there’s not much difference between reheating a fresh-that-morning tortilla from a bakery and making your own which will get stale by the time you get your take-home taco home. The sort of tortillas we love in the best places in Corpus just aren’t as good when you take them to-go. They’re best hot off the griddle, eating in. There’s no eating anything hot of the griddle at Tapatio—it’s gotta travel. That’s just my theory on tortillas. Take it for what you will.

    Second, I will grant you that some things at La Iguana are better than others. Their flour tortillas are a mystery to me. I’ve never had such a thick, hard mess. They’re corn are pretty darn tasty, though. Thick for corn, but tasty. As you said, salsas are good. Breakfast tacos aren’t the best because of said problems with flour tortillas. But their breakfast plates are tasty (with corn tortillas). And they have great tortas, pastor, green enchiladas, and rice & beans. My husband loves the chimichanga. Not a fan of their red enchiladas. I say all this knowing that this is a breakfast blog, but I want to be your ambassador to the good things at La Iguana. I agree with you that there are better all-around places in Corpus. La Iguana’s not all bad, though.

    Also, just curious, why live in Portland when Corpus is obviously your true love? Without some sort of family connection to it (which is, I gotta say, the only reason I moved back), I really don’t get the appeal . . . more gay-hating Baptists than you can shake a stick at and that weird friday football thing. I’ve been railing against it my entire life and am begrudgingly learning to live with it again having recently moved back to be closer to family after 12 years in my true-love of Houston. Because, I mean, you’re obviously more than welcome, but we don’t get too many connoisseurs of hip on this side of the bridge and I’m always baffled why people live in Portland only to complain about being in the “back waters” all the time. It has its detractions (few dining options, mean Republicans, Friday Night Lights w/out the cute head coach) but it has its charms (Sunset Lake, HEB where everyone knows your name, I can go for a walk after dark totally worry-free), as well. It’s hard for me, as someone who grew up in Portland (and whose parent’s grew up in Portland, for that matter) to understand Corpus’s weird antipathy for our little town. For one, why do they care? And two, it’s kinda like only I can make fun of my dumb-ass brother–anyone else does, I get a little rankled. So, my question to you is, why live in Portland in the “desert” in the first place when there’s a perfectly fine city across the bridge where your heart obviously lies??? I’m truly curious.

    p.s. oh my god, I can’t believe I just wrote a 1000-word comment to a blog.

    • Taco Show Host says:

      I had a family connection in Portland, and haven’t left. I moved here from Austin in 02, but I’d been coming to Portland since I was born. I’ve moved enough times to not want to do it again, and my family has a nice home with some history. That said, I’ve never gotten very involved with anything in Portland, and have always felt a sort of cold shoulder from the locals, and the local law. It does feel safe to the point of being sterile, but I have had my house burglarized, and I have had my truck broken into (they stole my mexican blue Fender Jazz bass). I work in the downtown/uptown area so it’s a quick trip across the causeway and one of the most beautiful drives you can get in Texas. I’m not leavin’. I’d as soon live here as the South side. I really see Portland as a Corpus Christi neighborhood, rather than its own city.

      On the double drive through taqueria, it is run with a sinister efficiency, they make a good carne g, a really good horchata, and the service is great. Some tortillas do travel better, though (banda’s on leopard). How did you get the inside skinny on their tortilla supply chain?

Leave a Comment