4701 Ayers, Suite 101, Corpus Christi, Texas • 361-814-8859
Chorizo & Egg $1.40 • Carne Guisada $2.15 • Coffee $1.35

Tax day is approaching, and though Summer technically begins June 20th, there were triple digit temperatures in Ctown yesterday, and steam is hanging in the air. It’s the time of year when we realize our AC needs to be fixed. Where the left side of the lawn needs mowed before you’ve finished with the right side. And while summer here lasts for about 7 months, good tacos are non seasonal – we’ve got’em year ’round.

Mi Meza recently planted itself in the space formerly occupied by Hu-Dat on Crosstown. The heavily (and well) tattooed lady behind the counter said they had relocated here from a spot on McArdle with a different name, and that they needed more space. Well, more space they’ve got. The inside is big and pretty tidy. The service was good, and the clientelle polite. I ordered a carne guisada and a chorizo & egg. The quality of the food was about on-par with what we’ve come to expect in Tacotopia. The beef in the carne guisada was tender, and the gravy rich – though it was more a black pepper beef stew than a homemade cumino sauce. The chorizo & egg was good, fresh and perfectly cooked. The tortillas were fresh and hot, especially when unwrapped from their foil packages. It was a modest but earnest meal, as you would expect from a restaurant just finding it’s legs. With the location of the restaurant I expect they’ll do well.

Our free taco winner for this week is:

Kelli Garner

This blonde-haired, green-eyed California girl was born in Bakersfield. With her quirky overbite, cupid-bow lips and stunning features, Garner has… garnered a broad range of roles, from independent films (Thumbsucker) to respected biopics (the Aviator) to calculated corporate network tv series (Pan Am). Whether she’s on stage, on tv, in the movie theater, or in music videos, you can count on her stealing the show.

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 in on a copy of Normal Adolescent Behavior to tacos@tacotopia.net.

TacoShowHost's family at the undisclosed location/taco bunker.

There is little better than a taco fresh from the cocina, with steam coming out of a fresh tortilla. If there is a heaven, it will have fresh tacos. Sometimes, though, it’s just not convenient to herd a crew into a taqueria. They can be crowded, sometimes less than squeaky-clean, and occasionally intimidating to people who aren’t locals. Maybe you want to have breakfast ready for your family when they wake up so they can eat a taco in their payamas. Maybe you want to spike your coffee, and don’t want to carry an open container with you to work. These are all times when the ubiquitous drive-through becomes invaluable.

Many people in Tacotopia don’t have the luxury of time to sit down to breakfast. This is one of the reasons Stripes’ Laredo Taco Company does so well; you can get in and out while someone else on your crew fills the work truck with diesel, and when you show up at the job site, you’re the hero for the rest of the day. Nothing makes a roughneck smile like a hot juicy taco. This is the genius of the taco as a food: it is one of the most portable foods known to man. You might spill some juice on you but you can eat on the road, in a kayak, on a tractor, on a jetty, or anywhere else you feel the need for breakfast. Try that with a salad.

My parents are visiting me. They’re actually renovating a new wing of the taco bunker so they’ll have somewhere to stay when they make their annual 1500 mile taco run. There were hairy construction workers and a gaggle of tiny dogs that hadn’t yet worked out the pecking order at my house this morning. I had tacos to eat, but I needed to be home. I pointed my trusty dodge across the causeway and drove through Bandas.

Before you knew it, my family and I were eating great tacos, right at our table, and with my wife’s superior homemade salsa. Everyone got their fill, and the cleanup was a breeze.

Our taco award winner for this week is:

Melissa McCarthy

Chicago area native Melissa McCarthy is a big girl. She’s also hot. We live in a fractured culture where it’s difficult for many to have both of these ideas in their head at the same time. Tune into Bravo (which should be renamed the Real Housewives channel) any night of the week, and you’ll see a series of trainwrecks who are doing everything they can to be skinny while making certain parts of themselves fat. None of their boobs are small, or real, and their lips are unnaturally puffy. This schizophrenic quest has landed some of them in the loony bin, and made it impossible for most of them to even make simple facial expressions. The problem is so widespread in the entertainment industry that directing styles are having to adapt, focusing on script and editing to make up for the inability of many leading ladies to emote. Fabienne in Pulp Fiction put it best in saying “It’s unfortunate what we find pleasing to the touch and pleasing to the eye is seldom the same.” Melissa McCarthy, though, is pleasing to the eye. She’s all natural, and all beautiful. It helps that she was born with a  great face, (Jenny McCarthy is her 1st cousin) but there’s more to her attractiveness than that. She’s smart. She’s funny. She’s often cast as the overweight wallflower with the heart of gold, and this works because she does have an accessible quality, like you could call her late at night if you were in crisis and she wouldn’t hang up on you. She hasn’t returned any of my calls, but I still love her. Let’s hope she lifts that restraining order so I can buy her a taco.

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 in on a dvd of GO to tacos@tacotopia.net.

I started writing this entry this morning and ended up with a 750 word screed against partisanship and the two party system. While it is important to me to keep myself at a distance from the lascivious nastiness of politics it is also nearly impossible. It is very much like compulsive overeating. I can’t continue to eat like my brain chemistry tells my I should, but I can’t quit entirely without dying. I will try to keep it to a minimum here in the blog. If you want to read the redacted post, go to www.ianokeefe.com.

If you’re here for taco talk, I can give that to you too. The way I do this blog is very hush-hush. I don’t tell the people at the restaurants that I’m a blogger. I don’t want to skew the quality or service of the establishments by alerting the taquerias to my presence. I come in cold, order, pull out my huge camera, and get out before anyone is the wiser. I’m on a mission to try all the Jaliscos in the area. Jalisco #9 is up IH-37, in the heart of refinery row. From my booth I could see a plum of fire escaping a flare stack. What I’ve been told is that whenever you can see the flame, something is out of whack with the refining process. No matter, I live here, in for a penny, in for a pound.

I ordered my usual, a carne guisada and a chorizo & egg. In the time it took to walk to the kitchen and back I had two tacos. The tortillas weren’t made to order, I’d guess not even on site, but were fresh. The carne guisada was not so good, with some chunks less fresh than others – which makes the whole thing taste funky. The chorizo & egg was pretty good if light on the chorizo. The salsa was a ranchera, and provided some salvation to the arthritic guisada and a welcome boost to the chorizo & egg. The coffee was excellent, and was frequently refilled by the two pretty waitresses.

It’s not the best taqueria in Corpus Christi, or even the best Jalisco, but I walked away satisfied.

Our free taco winner for this week is:

Sara Ramirez

Born in Mazatlan, Mexico, Sara Ramirez moved to San Diego, then to NYC where she graduated from Juilliard. She’s Mexican with a little Irish in her, which is a pretty beautiful combination. My wife is a big fan of Grey’s Anatomy. While it’s not the first show I pick to watch, it is one of the few shows that she and I both like. One thing I like about it is Sara Ramirez who plays Dr. Callie Torres. In any sensible world Ramirez wouldn’t be considered plus sized, but we live in a world controlled by morons, and this is especially so in entertainment media. Plus size or not, Sara is hot, with her sultry arched eyebrows and her curvaceous figure. I’ll watch all the wife-friendly tv in the world if Sara Ramirez is in 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 in on a bootleg copy of Spamalot to tacos@tacotopia.net.