tacotopia

Restaurants are no different.  Some of them are great and die early, some of exist forever with a steady, plodding mediocrity, but a few continue to improve with each passing year.  Eddie’s is one of those places.  Recommended time and again, most recently by Solomon Ortiz, Jr. (who is in no way affiliated with this blog and likely has never read it), we threaded our way through the cluster of taquerias that is Kostoryz Road and met up at this venerable institution. Neither Kevin nor I had eaten here before and didn’t quite know what to expect.  Google maps choked on the directions, possibly thinking there couldn’t possibly be so many taco place in such a small space.  Then we saw the big red neon sign and there could be no mistaking it.

The place was big, fairly clean but crammed full of ‘flair.’  Halloween decorations were already up.  Eddie’s has been around since 1975, and it doesn’t look a day over 25.  A ‘distinguished’ and attractive waitress expeditiously took our order with wit and precision and before long we were feasting our eyes and soon our appetites on some of the best breakfast tacos Kostoryz has to offer.  The coffee was good, and served in a mug that could barely fit through the Panama Canal.  The tacos as well were abundant, but the quantity did not come at the expense of the quality.  The chorizo & egg was good, the hand-made flour tortillas were good as well.  The salsa is from pickled jalepeños and is very good.  The best thing I had was the Carne Guisada, which had a sharp flavor but a gravy that was more brown than red with a healthy dose of black pepper.  It was tender but substantial.  My coffee cup was kept full as was my sonic-ice filled water.

Any two of these things would make Eddie’s a good taco shop, but if you put it all together you have something really special, something more than the sum of its parts, a timeless beauty.  I only hope I can age as well as this place has.

From the Hat

It’s not telegraphed, but usually there’s an underlying theme to the weekly taco tome.  One or two words to inspire.  The goal is to ramble around for a couple of hundred words on something to do with the theme then talk about tacos.  Sounds simple.  Not always.  Today’s theme, “Better with age,” is perfect for a whimsical, rambling, nostalgic thought tour.  Plenty of opportunity to harken back to the old times or to make hackneyed references to wine, favorite boots, or an old chair.

I’m having none of it.  You have to really think about it to find examples of things that get better with age.  Tell it to my eyes, or my truck.  Tell it to the plumbing at my house.  Sure I understand the device.  A mental trick we play on ourselves to help us rationalize our own mortality; to avoid thinking of the unavoidable.

But then I think of my grandmother Caroline.   I’m sure she’d tell you of the wear of age.  But when I see her, I see youth and beauty.  She’s full of wonder for the world and new places.  Full of joy when around her (now-extensive) family.  Still learning – combating technology as a new user to FaceBook.  I hope to learn to live with her joy for life long before I’m her age.

Of course, I’d like to reach her age.  Not likely with a continued menu like this morning’s.  A once-a-week limit on taco-tourism is a good thing.  And so were the tacos…good things.

If Corpus Christi is the land of tacos, Kostoryz street could be its epicenter.  The street offered up another outstanding taqueria, Eddie’s.  Recommended by many, including one of our state reps, the place was really good.

For the SMEs out there, I had one each chicharron and molleja.   I had the mollejas fried crispy.  They were perfect – crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside.  Those who like mollejas will really like these.  The chicharrones were also very good.  Meaty, soft, covered with a chili powder-based sauce.  They were served in very good flour tortillas.  Serious fatties too.  I could not eat both of them.  The salsa was also good.  We will definitely return to this place.  I think I need to try the mollejas with some frijoles.

Salud

Enrique’s Restaurant

5230 Kostoryz Rd # 1

Corpus Christi, TX 78415

361-851-2864

Chorizo & Egg – $1.39

Carne Guisada – $1.88

Over the past few weeks my life has become confusing and I’ve had this feeling that it’s missing something.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a happy man.  I love my wife and kid.  I’m professionally satisfied.  But at a certain point a lot of guys start to realize their youth is rushing away from them like a falling tide and it’s not coming back.  Some guys do the unspeakable and transgress the covenant of marriage.  Some buy a Harley and hang out on weekends with other white collar types in a similar place – dressed up for show to disguise the creeping malaise of eminent mortality.  Kevin & Shelly could be spotted cruising the strip in a Dodge Prowler this week, and when the thrill was exhausted from that as it inevitably is with cheap thrills they re-upped and bought a new Lexus.  I have simpler tastes – I pawned my Canon 40D DSLR and headed down the squalid sidewalks of taco row: Kostoryz.

I’d heard tell of this one little number – Enrique’s. “The bean tacos are the best you’ll ever have,” they said.  I had to find out myself if 25 years of satisfied customers could be wrong.  As we shuffled up to the front door of Enrique’s Restaurant past the tawdry ‘Romance Room’ bar we weren’t sure of what we could expect.  Once inside we were seated at a big table and looked at the expensively trimmed wood paneling and highbrow fixtures that belied the fact that this place sits in a run-down shopping center.  The waitresses brought the food to the table and we noticed they must have all left their cotton uniforms in the dryer too long this morning.  The service was good.  The coffee was good.  They offered a broad range of tacos – catering to any taste.  There was even a spam & egg taco on the menu – for those with the most depraved appetites.  The tortillas were homemade thick – both flour and corn.  The chorizo and egg was decent, and the carne guisada was better than average.  Something about the tacos when all put together was at once greater than the sum of its parts and less than hoped for.  The star of the show was the beans.  Sultry and greasy they defy description, sitting in pool of what I think was bacon drippings.  They were so good, but it felt so wrong eating them.  By the time we were leaving I felt strangely unsatisfied, despondent and more confused than when I’d come in.  ‘I’m so sorry’ ran through my head as I rehearsed it.  I hope my regular taqueria will take me back.

From the Hat

I write this epistle today with thoughts about life’s high noon.  I’ve started seeing the telltale signs of age.  Today its ears, but eyes, knees, and who knows what else will plague me in the coming years.  I guess it happens to everything.  Time and Gravity don’t play favorites.   But without that long passage of time, we’d not have long-time friends.  Today, and for the weekend, my long-time best friend Jim R. is in town running from the World Championship Bar-b-que Goat Cook-off in Brady, Texas.  He’s here in Sur de Tejas with a truck full of drum kit.  We’re hoping to drag Ian into a couple of jam sessions this weekend in Papalote.

The mob tacoed at Enrique’s this morning.  The tacos were good, not great, but well worth the trip.  For you gearheads, I had something called Carne Fritas.  Thin-sliced little disks of fried beef in a savory sauce with tomatoes and lettuce on a homemade corn tortilla.  The corn tarp was good.  Could  be me, but it could have used salt.  I like them a bit thinner, but for you thick corn tortilla fans, it was a good one.   I also had a picadillo taco.  Basically ground hamburger taco meat with potatoes added.  It was tasty – served on a good homemade flour tortilla.

The Star of the show today was the salsa – a very fresh-tasting squirt bottle of red delicious with plenty of heat.  I considered asking to take some to go.  The coffee was good too.  It was the standard café coffee that you find everywhere.  Good honest coffee with no pretentious names and sizing conventions.  The place was clean.  The woodwork on the uncluttered walls is really well done and meant to be there in a couple of decades.

As we left, I noticed the shopping center was showing  signs of middle age too.  But with just a little imagination, I could see gentrification happening in the next several years.  My guess is that Enrique’s will still be around for that future facelift.  I’ll be there too, having a taco.

Salud

Shelly N. Ordered Egg a la Mexicana and a Egg, Cheese & Bean, both on Corn. The a la Mexicana had good sized pieces of Serrano that balanced perfectly the flavor with the burn. There could have been more bean on the second taco but all in all ‘very, very good.’

Monica ‘the Audit Master’ O. is the lone native tongue and is like to invent her own dishes. This week was no exception; she ordered Migas with Chorizo and found them to be excellent.

I stayed with my default, Chorizo & Egg, Carne Guisada, and Coffee. All of this is good if you get it in the drive through, but there is a difference if you eat it at the table. The service is excellent, with you coffee always full and your food delivered by beautiful and dignified (and apparently entirely female) wait staff. Both of these tacos were about as perfect as tacos can be. The C&E starts out a bit dry but by the end your fingers are red and slippery. The Carne G contains an absurd amount of flavor and it’s hard to believe it can be contained within its flour skin.

The tortillas are heavenly. You can barely see the difference between the flour and the corn. They’re big, fresh, supple and hot. And the Coffee was top notch. The salsa is one of the few things one can find wrong. It’s more a food moisturizer than a flavor itself, and is not hot nor flavorful. Garibaldi’s is, quite simply, the best.

Garibaldi’s was suggested by Ian as an acceptable high-bar for judging tacos in Corpus Christi.  As occasional taco talking head, I’ve decided to be less scientific in my method than Ian.  Instead of the same taco, I’m likely to have something different every time.  Maybe not as comparible as Ian’s methods, but this departure will allow me to partake freely from the more ambitious taco ingredients.  While not bizarre by any strech of the imagination, my chicharrones a la Mexicana taco and a hefty barbacoa kept my wife from sampling my food.  The barbacoa was good, though it needed salt.  Garnished with fresh cilantro and diced onions, it was a great-looking taco.  Having eaten barbacoa on many occasions, I felt it could have been a bit fattier.  (Don’t tell my doctor).  It was missing the richness and essence of cow that I’ve come to love in the dish.  The chicharrones a la Mexicana was very good.  The chicharrones were tender, but with a slight bite to them.  All-in-all, very well done.  The pico in the Mexicana was fresh and flavorful.  This was the better of the two morning tacos.  I had both on corn torillas.  A GREAT choice.  They were awesome.  The coffee was exceptional.  Together with friends, I’d say the whole affair was an “A” event.