The neighbor on the other side is the Sea Gulf Villa, home of some of the most interesting characters in the area – if you know what I mean.  To some extent Brandy’s has a captive clientele and even has a side door that leads into the courtyard of the ‘Villa.’ Downtown is a hard place to make a business work (believe me, I know) but Brandy’s has been around since 2006.  Before that it was where Dragonfly was hatched before moving to the island and ultimately to their new location on SPID about a mile further South.

You’ll find this place infused with Catholic kitsch and a DIY aesthetic. Piecemeal signage decorates the front of the restaurant, and anytime you walk in you’re likely to find Brandy herself doing the cooking, with a slightly troubled look behind her omnipresent smile. There’s every indication that she has put her heart and soul into this restaurant, as well as all of her time and resources. That said you should realize my opinion of this place is not unbiased. I want her to succeed, I want her to grow into other locations – namely Portland, but there is no hyperbole in my exaltation of Brandy’s tortillas which are transcendent. Made in house by hand every few orders they come to the table so hot from being cooked that you’ll burn your fingers trying to handle them. They couldn’t be more fresh, period.

The carne guisada was pretty good, and needed no salt. The hat didn’t like the salsa but I did – it reminded me of chíle I’d had many mornings in Dallas sitting around the Palafox table, with eggs and tortillas, and serranos from the the plant in the back yard. Heavy on the garlic salt, tomato sauce, and fresh peppers roasted on cast iron and crushed in a mocajete. The chorizo and egg had the perfect interplay between warring chorizo & egg factions – with both trying to stay independent but at the same time working to infiltrate the other.  The coffee was hot, fresh, and plentiful, as was the company. Over the course of the meal three people we know, each one a beach bum for life, stopped in just to say hi. It was as if there were a little pocket of good will inside Brandy’s that overwhelmed my normal distrust and cynicism and left me thinking the world isn’t hopeless.  I can feel it wearing off as the tacos are even now being digested, and the feeling like the tacos will pass on.

There was a theme that ran through our conversations, and through everything else that has followed this morning – that of imperfection and how it punctuates beauty. There’s the Texas coast blogged about by friend of tacotopia Joy. There’s the taco award winner this week who’s insanity and ability to overcome it is much more impressive than someone who’d ended up in the same place without having to travel to get there. There’s Brandy’s, which is rough around the edges and falls short of some of the nicer taco shops in Corpus in terms of polish but has all the heart of any place out there, and you’d be hard pressed to find a better chorizo & egg.

Barbacoa with a fried egg on top!

I just wanted to give y’all a bit of time to let that settle in your brainpan before I went on.  Ms. M. put the demon seed in my head to order this monster.  It must have been Mary Shelley she was reading on her new iPatty.  I don’t know but it was definitely Evil Genius.  There was onion and cilantro, but protein definitely ruled this taco.  I usually order my fried egg fried hard, but I decided that messy might be in order and ended up with over-easy.  Mess was right.  Halfway through, the tortilla was showing serious wear.  Not to dis the tortilla at all.  It was superb.  Made fresh with just a little sprinkling of flour on the outside.  Delicious.  But it was a mess.  Next time, and yes, I’m sure there’ll be a next time, I’m goin’ with fried hard.  The barbacoa itself was Tacotopia average.  Hard to separate the barbacoa from the liquid chicken, so I’ll just say I’ll have to try the barbacoa by itself before passing judgement.  But as a partner in crime with the egg, it was excellent.

There had been a crowd waiting to get in…again, and I could smell bacon from the street.  Funny, even the streets of D-town are better with bacon.  So I was optimistic.  I’d heard good things and that location seems to have some magic in it. It’s been the home to many excellent places to eat over the decades.  I guess TSH had been to Brandy’s many times – me, two.  The first time was on the highly rated and internationally acclaimed Spam Edition.  For only an instant did I consider a reprise of that event, but I settled on a chorizo and bean.  The chorizo and bean I’m beginning to discover is a good indicator.  Both are aggressive flavors and getting them to play nice without losing themselves in one another is hard to do.  Brandy’s beans bellowed, “Bacon!”  Bacon and Chorizo…Hmm.  I think there’s potential there.  Anyway, Brandy’s bacony beans faced down chorizo’s frontal assault ’til the very end.  The chorizo was good.  It didn’t jump up at me screaming “I’m the best chorizo you’ve ever had,” but those moments are infrequent.  At first, I thought the taco was a tad tiny.  But that was because it was hanging around with that fat barbacoa taco.  Once into it, I knew that any more of the dense beans and chorizo in that baby and I’d have to forgo eating for the weekend.

The good food was interrupted for brief moments with conversation.  The topics ranged from lamenting the loss of the greatest generation, to that nightmare in the gulf.  And the whole breakfast experience was punctuated with visits from friends Sawyer Ron and the Cool Breeze.  I wish I could have stayed and had another cup of Brandy’s cafe good Joe, but I was in a hurry.  If someone captured me and threatened me with torture, I might say the weak link was the salsa.  It was fresh, but mostly tomato had absolutely no heat.  Good Breakfast.

Salud

We had breakfast with said fan and a co-worker this morning. I’d use their names but I didn’t get a release signed, and they work in the legal profession. I dare not expose the tacotopia empire to any undue liability. Suffice it to say they were both charming and are welcome to allow us to return the favor any Friday they’d like.

We’d planned on reviewing Brandy’s but I’d failed to do proper research ahead of time and when the gang all showed up we found a sign that said she opens at 7:30. This is the second time this has happened at Brandy’s.  At least now I know. Next week, 7:30, third time’s the charm.

Alma’s is on Ayers, near six points, near other tacotopia alums the Donut Hole and Chacho’s, across from the old Butter Krust bakery. In Austin, I was bussed out of my Burnett Junior High neighborhood to Martin. The bus would pass the Butter Krust bakery on the way before eventually making it’s way downtown past the capitol building and an ‘oriental massage’ parlor. I was young enough at the time to think both of those places were engaged in legitimate business. Like the one here in Corpus the bakery in Austin shut down in the mid 80’s, but I can remember the smell of the bread coming in through the school bus windows distracting every kid on the bus to pause their dice games and enhanced interrogation techniques to take in that glorious smell.

But we’re here to talk about tortillas, not bread; and Alma’s isn’t a bad place to get one. I’d been here a couple of times before, when it was named Anna’s.  I guess it wasn’t difficult to change the sign when the name changed. Alma’s has a lot of capacity though it was empty aside from us this morning. On other occasions I’ve often seen cop cars in the lot, and not for duty.

I got chorizo & egg, and a carne G as I do every Friday. They came out, big and hot, with the chorizo & egg closed and the guisada open to display a soupy deep brown peppered beef. It looked good, and it tasted as good as it looked. The red salsa was nothing special, but better than no salsa on the two tacos. The chorizo & egg was unlike any I’d seen before, with a magenta color that leeched into the eggs. It was very juicy, but the juice was amber, unlike the chorizo. It was good, whatever color it was. The tortillas themselves were really a pleasure to eat. They were big, tough but not dry, well done but not toasty, and stood up to the juicy fillings better than most. The coffee went down easy, and was refilled expeditiously.

This place is odd, but I like odd – especially when odd tastes good. It’s worth the trip.

From the Hat

Have you ever been in a car wreck, or something equivalent where everything moves in slow motion?  You really only have time to say “Oh Shit!” before the whole business is over, but it feels like it takes forever.  The anticipation of disaster stretched in time as you watch not in horror – there’s no time for that – but in that blank, WTF frame of mind as you hurtle toward the end.  It doesn’t really last long enough to get a good grasp of what’s going on and to form an opinion.  So if it is the end, you’ll go out in a daze, your last words a scatological epithet.  Not a very impressive ending, but getting a long, terrifying look at your demise wouldn’t be any better.

I mean, we’re getting that long, terrifying look right now in the Gulf of Mexico.  The numbers describing the amount of oil pouring into the gulf are rarely encountered in most people’s lives outside the weekly lotto drawing.  I watch daily as the oil is blown inexorably toward the coast.  Soon to come will be the oil-coated laughing gull getting his 15 minutes.  The Gulfo is a dynamic place, intimately connected to the rest of the world by currents that could transport the mess up the East Coast of Florida and beyond.  Hopefully they will staunch the leak quick – minimizing the damage to the gulf fisheries,  gulf coast ecosystems, and local, national, and global economies.

I also had that slow-motion feeling this morning.  I woke late, threw on some clothes, and rushed, half asleep, out the door to get downtown to Brandy’s.  I arrived, to find TSH and a pair of Taco Tourists standing in front of the locked door of Brandy’s.  We decided on a short trip to Alma’s on Ayers.  The place was large, but unoccupied.  We ordered coffee and I started to wake up.  The four of us sat, played 6-degrees, then got to the ordering.  I had a picadillo with cilantro y jalapenos frescos, and a nopalitos and egg.  Both were very big.  I took on the picadillo first.  The ground beef was served in a thicker-than-usual, browner-than-usual sauce and had a very promising proportion of potatoes.  It needed a bit of sal, but was savory and delicious.  Customarily, I devour one taco, then the next, but I held back the last bites of picadillo to savor later.  The nopalitos taco had some difficulty.  It was stuffed with eggs and a fair dinkum amount of cactus.  The taste was fine, but I think that the cactus juice might have watered the eggs just a bit, compromising the texture.   It was passable, but carried by the tortillas.  The flour tortillas were just how I like them – toothy and cooked to the cusp of crispy.  The salsa was fresh, had a respectable heat, and worked well with the tacos.  The service was very good.  The chef himself came out to inquire exactly how I wanted my jalapenos on the side, fresh or pickled and we never lacked for coffee.

Between the good breakfast, and the company of newly-met taco fans, I say it was a great start to the day.

Salud