At once I saw a sign for the chow stand, hand-painted on wood, a real beauty. My backup, ‘the Hat,’ had showed up ahead of me and they served him up in short order.  In minutes they had my vittles out as well.  A tall cup of drip coffee and two tacos.  I’d asked for a chorizo & egg, and a carne guisada.  The guisada was pretty tasty with a strong flavor and plenty of cumino. It was big too, and I knew my horse would need some rest after my trip back North. When I got to the chorizo & egg I discovered it had been replaced with an entirely different taco – bait and switch, a tactic those carpetbaggers at Demon Pass might try in the upcoming battle. What I had still looked pretty good, though, and I’m not one to argue with fate, in which case the arguer tends to lose, and I started to eat into what turned out to be a breakfast sausage, egg, cheese & potato taco.  Both tacos were big, and we ate them on the wooden picnic tables set up in the only place there was to eat – an outside covered patio.  The amber lamp of the sun colored everything we were eating with a dusty light, and the wind blew so hard we had to hold down our coffee to keep it from spilling.

The tortillas were handmade, and had blackened patches from the plaqa that were just on the right side of overdone.  There was salsa but it wasn’t much to speak of.  Neither of us talked about the upcoming battle, it was going to happen one way or the other, no matter what we thought.  Maybe it’d be better in the long run, but then again maybe it’d just be another lie the government told us so it could go on doing whatever it wants to do – which seems to be working in cahoots with fatcats and tycoons who build their empires on the broken backs of the people they screwed to pay for it. Once they get a taste for that money you can’t cure’m, and if you let them run free they’ll infect the rest of the herd.  If you ask me we’d be better off if we rounded them all up and stampeded them off the edge of Flour Bluff.

So next time you’re out on the trail, and you see someone on an Texas-sized red and white horse with a little bag of tacos, come on up and set a spell.  That is unless you’re campaigning, then you might as well head on over to Demon Pass.

From The Hat

Good Morning Tacotopia!  Hope Spring Break has been good to you.  If you’re not getting a break, then I hope you’re enjoying the weather.  Thanks to all of you who have left a mark on Tacotopia.net, the Facebook Fan Page, or on the Caller Times Website.  Special thanks to those who left a raspberry on the NYT site regarding the recent “Best Taco in Texas” brouhaha.  It’s been good to wallow in the much-deserved buzz but it should be noted that no amount of celebrity will keep us from our mission.  That mission had us up dark and early this morning for a trip to the hinterlands – Flour Bluff.

Flour Bluff is hardly the place it used to be.  Historically the butt jokes, usually about shrimpers or missing teeth; The Bluff has seen a renaissance in the last decade or so.  Poised on prime property between the Sparkling City and the Island, it is no wonder that the area has seen population and business growth. I know of one example where people were run out of their ratty residences so the apartments  could be renovated and re-rented to those with more robust resources (Arrrrr!).  While this was an inconvenience for my friend Dicky (Dicky Neely Blues Band), another friend benefitted from the work. I guess that’s how it goes in the world, some get work, others get worked. Dickey, a master of the harmonica still plays the Coastal Bend, contributes to local papers and maintains several blogs including one dedicated to the blues. Being in the Bluff makes me think of Dickey and how I haven’t seen him in a while. I think I’ll do something about that!

The Taco Show Host and I had agreed to meet at Taqueria Almeida #1 on Waldron Rd and I was early.  I had the paper and was looking forward to running through the local items of import, having a cup of coffee, and taking in the atmosphere. Almeida’s #1 came highly recommended by many people including noted FB taco specialist, Terry P. who maintains that they were consistently better than their in-city sister. When I arrived, I had to circle the place before I realized there was no indoor dining area, instead was a nice, clean, covered patio area and a steady stream of customers both drive-up and walk-up. There was a bit of a cold wind, and being dressed in CC formal, I decided to wait in the truck. I ordered a papas con chorizo and a nopalitos and egg, both on flour torts at the walk-up window just as TSH was tying up his horse. The tacos arrived quickly and turned out to be pretty good. The tortillas were fresh with a light dust of flour and both tacos were stuffed to capacity with the goods. The chorizo con papas was flavorful with the vinegary taste that I like. The potatoes were soft, but not over-cooked – a fine offering. The nopalitos taco was served a la Mexicana and had plenty of cactus. The mix needed salt, but other than that, it was also a good offering and will satisfy the cactus jones. I give Taqueria Almeida a thumbs-up.

Salud

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…

Being the third month of the new year I have yet to give up hope of reaching my goal weight for the year.  I’ve been walking downtown instead of driving, and climbing stairs to the 7th floor instead of taking the elevator, at least sometimes.  One of the most difficult sacrifices I’ve had to make is the cherished taco.  There was a time where I’d have a taco every morning, and Yaneth at Garibaldi’s would have my order waiting for me, her perfume wafting from the takeout bag.  Okay, that never happened anywhere but in my daydreams. Long story short – tacos are my motivation, my reason to push through the work-week.  I love the first time in a new taco shop, the first smell of the tacos and the particular ambience of the place, the kitsch, purses and belts for sale, candles and good luck charms, the endless supply of charming waitresses and of course the tacos.

As the name says, this is in the Southside.  And for those of you not familiar with the layout of Corpus Christi, which is perpetually confusing even to those who live here, the Southside is the part of town where all the new development is occurring.  It’s a little more caucasian than downtown and the Westside.  The police seem to spend a lot more time in that part of town even though they’re headquartered downtown.  There are tons of strip centers, and no meter maids.  All the buildings are less that 70 years old (most are less than 7).  Southside Barbacoa is different too. Spanish isn’t the primary language spoken, it is in a strip center (literally, right next to the Palace), and even though it is a barbacoa restaurant, they don’t have homemade corn tortillas.

None of these things are deal-breakers.  A taco doesn’t know where it came from.  The Hat and I settled in to see what this place was all about.  I can’t speak for the barbacoa, even though I had a bite – barbacoa taken out of context (sans tortilla, salsa, salt) can be misleading.  The chorizo and egg was good though.  The filling of the taco was above average but not spectacular.  The tortillas were the high point, fresh but with a little bit of crunch on the edges – and no loose flour which doesn’t bother me but which many find disagreeable.  The carne guisada was tender but not soft, and had just the right amount of tang so that the flavor popped, but didn’t resemble meat that had gone over.  The red salsa was unsuitable for human consumption – Pace or more likely a food service knock-off thereof, but the salsa verde was quite good.

The hat and I weren’t the only people there, there were a few take-out orders filled, and some apparent regulars including a cop, Loyd Neal and John Longoria.  We all know cops have excellent food radar, so maybe the politicians were using the cop as a bird-dog. The Hat and I headed out into the overcast morning, satisfied and looking forward to the next Friday, the next taco, if we can wait that long.

From the Hat

So it’s no secret I’m a Houston-phile.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the Sparkling City.  But sometimes it does a body good to get to the big lights and enjoy the things that can only exist in the midst of a large aggregation of people.  The power of large numbers makes it possible to open anything from telescope shops to Scotch Tape Boutiques.  There are trade-offs though.  Houston, with a museum district as big as our school district, has traffic to match.  There might be a store for everything, but crossing H-town to get there and back can take hours.  Still, if you want stuffed cabbage and Matzo ball soup at 4:00am, you can get it.  If you need a lens cover for your German-made binoculars, you can get it.  And if you need a variety of stinky cheese, fine liquors, and the pate and caviar to go with them, you can get them.

And now Corpus seems to be seeing some move in that direction with the opening of Spec’s.  Spec’s opened this week Thursday and I admit, I had to sneak in around noon to check it out.  The place was pretty much what I expected.  It’s in a nascent stage with much growing to do, but I can see great potential.  The wine section seems to be extensive, but I’ll have to talk to an expert to know for sure.  The gourmet section is a start, but far from the Houston examples.  There’s some space on the shelves, but a conversation with one of the employees revealed that there’s much more to come.  I was impressed with the store and think that it will eventually approach the epic nature of Houston’s downtown example.  Way to go Spec’s, and CC!

-And now to the important stuff.  The Tacoteurs Friday tour stop was Southside Barbacoa.  I had to have the namesake and a chorizo con papas – both on flour.  The barbacoa was the low-fat version.  [I’d doubt it’s lowfat in any conventional sense of the word -iok] The mixed version, a fattier composition is only sold on weekends.  Made on-site in about 11 hours, it was very good.  My favorite though was the chorizo and papas.  It was sublime, loaded with chorizo and saturated potatoes.  It had that perfect vinegary taste I love in a good chorizo.  The torts were right up my alley, dense and with plenty of bite.  Both tacos benefitted from a fresh jalapeno green salsa, but I won’t waste any words on the red stuff.  All-in-all, a very good experience and I’ll have to go back to check out the mixed version of the barbacoa.

–Salud