Kiko’s – The Contender and the Uncanny Valley
Chorizo & Egg – $1.59 • Carne Guisada – $1.99 • Bottomless but lifeless coffee – $1.15
If you live here you know: Corpus Christi is the center of the breakfast taco world. Period. So Imagine my chagrin when I read an article in the New York Times bestowing that crown on Austin’s pointed head. I grew up in Austin, and I can drive down any street in that city and tell you about some party I went to there, or what great music venue used to over here. There are things Austin has got that I wish Corpus had – Waterloo Records, KUT, the Alamo Drafthouse – but we have the best tacos hands down. I wrote John Edge, the author of the article in question, and explained this fact to him. He was kind enough to reply saying:
“United Tastes, the column I write, addresses the ongoing evolution of American culinary culture. In Austin, I found a city where breakfast tacos — served by Cambodian as well as Thai, Indian, and Vietnamese cooks — are becoming unhypenated American. I found a city where cooks were honing breakfast tacos that transcend traditional barriers of race and ethnicity. But I’ll stick by me declaration that, when it comes to making sense of how breakfast tacos are becoming an unhyphenated American food, Austin is the place to eat and think.”And while I respect any work that nurtures multiculturalism, this is so wrong. The column doesn’t claim Austin is ‘the best place for breakfast tacos that aren’t made by the people who invented them and know how to best make them,’ it says “when it comes to breakfast tacos, Austin trumps all other American cities.” Like a copy machine (or a clone, or a foreign film) the 2nd generation is never quite as good as the original. Look at the Storm Troopers – they’re taken right from Jango Fett’s DNA but he’s a bad-ass and every one of those storm troopers is a half-wit. I’m one of the only people on earth who liked Gus Van Saint’s remake of Psycho, but it’s not as good as the Hitchcock version. Can you think of any cigarrette lighter better than a Zippo? This unqualified affront to the great tradition of breakfast tacos must not stand, and like the Gracy family at the birth of the UFC I challenge any city to come here and put up or shut up. Just bring some kleenex and a some cardboard boxes, so you can pack up your broken dreams and wipe the tears from your eyes as you return home defeated to face the shame and humiliation of your ineptitude and the cold comfort of your inferior breakfast.
Imitation and re-imagination is fraught with pitfalls. Robot maker Masahiro Mori (I can’t pass up any opportunity to use the word robot) coined the phrase ‘Uncanny Valley’ to describe our reaction of revulsion to artificial humans that we find close enough to look more like a human than a robot, but at the same time seem inhuman and disturbing. There has been a lot of discussion of the Uncanny Valley regarding CGI as the technology sits at the edge of this valley peering in. What does this have to do with tacos, you ask? This morning we ate tacos at Kiko’s, a local taco purveyor and winner of the Caller Times‘ Best of the Best award for breakfast tacos. One need only to look at our national election system, or the academy awards to appreciate how easy it is for the unscrupulous to manipulate a poll. Kiko’s is an attractive and sprawling restaurant located a stone’s throw from Corpus’ main commercial thoroughfare S.P.I.D. (South Padre Island Drive). It’s central location is nearly perfect – close enough to the highway to pickup all the shopping traffic and far enough back that you can eat there and still feel like you’re in a neighborhood. It has a faux patina that is at once charming and artificial. I get the same two tacos every Friday, the carne guisada and the chorizo & egg. Their chorizo & egg taquito was pretty good, far short of such greats as Marroquin’s but still pretty tasty. The tortillas were just good enough to qualify as fresh, but not much better than off the shelf. The salsa, too, was fresh and hot but not great and somehow lacking anything to distinguish itself. Then there was the coffee: as the Hat said to me something was not quite right about it. Like a Stepford Wife it was satisfactory but a little creepy. All of these things fell into the Uncanny Valley, and tasted a few degrees off true. Let me throw another movie simile at this description, Dr. Seth Brundle in the Cronenberg remake of The Fly when he teleported the steak and then tasted it…
Something just wasn’t right. This was the case nowhere more true than in the carne guisada which could well have been the same steak. It looked great, the beef was tender, there was just the right amount of salt and viscosity in the gravy but it tasted synthetic, like I was eating it at the breakfast taco pavilion in Epcot.
While I can’t say the food here is bad, I also can’t recommend it in the shadow of so many terrific taco shops. This is a local taco touchstone and I don’t mean to alienate the faithful but they seem to do a brisk enough business that my detraction couldn’t adversely affect them.
Our free taco winner for this week is:
Kelly LeBrock
Kelly LeBrock played hands down the sexiest robot on planet earth as Lisa in Weird Science, and in the 80s could lead my unsuspected adolescent self into the uncanny valley and beyond, and to beat the metaphor to death, later fell into the valley of obscurity only to resurface in recent years to bath in the sullied waters of reality television. No one could approach her iconic visage during her brief stop at the summit of 80s teen desire. As time passed she aged, struggled with weight, and consorted with riff-raff (Steven Seagal). More recently she did come off as savvy, funny and frank in her interview for the John Hughes doc Don’t You Forget About Me. Honorable mention goes to Olivia Munn for reprising the role for the photo on the right.
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 a Shermer Athletics gym tee to tacos@tacotopia.net.
I run a t-shirt shop called Whetstone Graphics here in downtown Corpus Christi, and we sell a shirt that from a distance looks like a skull – a typical emo/screamo declaration of angst – but when you look at it more closely you see it’s actually several nude women. In a town like this it’s funny that the shirt that sells the best has naked ladies on it. It’s a tawdry illusion, and it’s the illusion that makes it interesting (okay, maybe the naked ladies help). The subject of our discussion this morning is La Bahia, and it is cloaked in illusion.
