Everyone deserves a second chance. La Tapatia #2 got a bad review a year ago due to some bad onions, and I wanted to revisit this place to see if the onions were an indicator of a more serious problem or just a fluke. Four of us converged this morning to get to the bottom of it, and in doing so we left unsure of what to think.

I arrived first, and seated myself in one of the aged brown vinyl button upholstered booths. It was surely intended to look old when it was new, but after 20 or 30 years of wear by derriere the booths here look like I might have seen them in someone’s yard on Hoarders. Also, there’s a hole in the drop ceiling surrounded by rusting trim; evidence of years of leakage. I have a similar situation to deal with at my business, and I know how hard it is to get a flat roof fixed. I parked in the corner so I could see any attackers coming, and had good coffee inside 60 seconds.One of the waitresses was singing to herself behind the counter until regulars showed up, speaking tex-mex in a familiar fashion with her.

The rest of the crew filed in, and we ordered. As our food arrived we all eyed it with some suspicion. I had no onions on my two tacos, but the Hat got barbacoa on corn con cebollas y cilantro and we all examined the chopped onions. They looked harmless, but it’s hard to tell from a chopped onion. They weren’t as translucent as you’d think they would be if they’d gone over. The Hat fearlessly took a big bite and after a few seconds of considered mastication gave us the thumbs up.

I started in on my tacos, served up on excellent handmade flour tortillas in the double D formation. On the left we have the staple of breakfast tacos – the chorizo & egg. The c&e was serviceable. Not the best I’ve had, but better than many. To the right was the carne guisada, technically not a breakfast taco. While it’s usually found on the lunch/dinner section of the menu, I find it is a good litmus test of the quality of the taqueria, and it’s usually delicious. This carne g in particular was much less soupy than most. It’d be hard to say if it was intentional, or if it had just sat in the steam tray for too long, but the extra toothiness complemented the beef.

There was one thing about the meal that left us confused – the salsa. It had a tangy flavor, and smelled like a bowl of salad left in the sink for a few days. I bought a refrigerated salsa back in the early 90s from HEB’s Central Market around 35th street in Austin that was fresh and filled with cilantro and onions. Then one day I got a jar that had gone sour, and I realized this after I had chewed and swallowed a big heaping chip of it.  I could never eat that salsa again without tasting it. This salsa had a flavor reminiscent of that, but I have heard of lacto-fermented salsa. Perhaps this is how it was supposed to taste. It did have some nice heat, and it wasn’t so bad that I didn’t put it on both of my tacos.

In the end we don’t know if there’s a freshness problem here. Maybe in another year we’ll come back and do a third sampling (and ask them). Then again, maybe not.

Our Taco Award Winner for this week is:

Elizabeth Hurley

Perhaps you remember her from Austin Powers or Bedazzled. Maybe you saw her representing Estée Lauder. You might recall her from the scandal with her stupid ex-husband and a certain ‘professional’. She weathered the press and humiliation, not divorcing Grant until 2000 – 5 years after the incident. She was given away at her wedding to Arun Nayar by Elton John. If I were Hugh, I’d be sorry if I saw her in this sari.

Offer includes 2 tacos, an audience with the ‘tacoteurs,’ and a free tacotopia t-shirt. Please redeem this offer at  to tacos@tacotopia.net. 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 dvd of ‘Aria‘

4701 IH- 37 • 6:00 AM – 7:00 AM

Einstein’s theory of relativity tells us that with a greater gravitational force acting upon an object it will pass more slowly through time. Scientists from NIST last month, with the help of two new ultra-precise Aluminum-Ion clocks, were able to measure a difference in the effect of gravity when the two clocks were only 13 inches apart. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around, but think of it like this. Corpus Christi sits over a base of a few incredibly dense people who cause an increase in the cities gravitation field which in turn causes the us to lag about 5-15 years behind most American cities in terms of adoption of new technology and cultural innovations.

There are of course exceptions to this. We are light years ahead of the rest of the world in taco technology. Our economic collapse was about 25 years ahead of that of the rest of the nation, but through some space-time anomaly it appears we may be stuck in this fiscal valley for an eternity. Most other things, though, happen in other places years before we get them. An example of this is the trending phenomenon of taco trucks, also known as Loncheras. In California, innovator of American culture in all things from hot rods to emissions standards to bo-tox, taco trucks are legion. They are so numerous, in fact, that the Food Network has made a reality show about them. To our north is Austin, a town that (bless it’s heart) makes up for the low quality of its tacos with high prices, and in turn innovations in the sales, marketing, and distribution of the objects of our desire. Armed with mobile kitchens, tech knowledge, and social media enabled devices, operators of what once were called roach coaches are taking over the culinary landscape in metropolitan areas all over the US. Their impact is enough that brick and mortar restaurants are pressing politicians to squeeze mobile vendors with increased regulations and code enforcement.

We don’t have this problem in Tacotopia, for two reasons. One – it’s hard to find a working taco truck, and two – it’s hard to find working politicians. We are at least 10 years behind Austin in taco truck proliferation. And while it is hard to find a mobile taco vendor, it is not impossible. We ran upon one in the parking lot of one of the Hurb’s Burgers on IH-37. It wasn’t a taco truck proper, it was just a white van with a cooler and a coroplast sign behind the windshield, but they did have a limited selection of tacos and a friendly disposition. There didn’t appear to be any coffee, but right across the parking lot was a bona-fide vending trailer that would have been at home in LA county: Hot Cups, combining coffee with bikinis. Ashley served us two hefty coffees with a winning smile and her tattoos peeking up out of her daisy dukes. Innovation is a good thing. The coffee was good too, dark and rich with a hint of hazelnut.

The Hat and I headed back to a testing facility to analyze the fare. The tortillas were fresh as one could hope for from the back of an unmarked van, and better than the nominally handmade tortillas we had last time at Las Milpas on Navigation. The carne guisada was quite good, making up for less than great beef with exceptional gravy. Add to this some top-notch red fresh salsa and you’ve got a winner. The chorizo & egg was good too, barely warm but better than room temperature and with little (but not too little) red grease.

The Hat talked to the taco seller who indicated he does own and operate a truck, but that it’s undergoing some needed repairs. We hope he gets it back on the road soon, so we can avail ourselves of the taste of tomorrow.

Our Taco Award Winner for this week is:

Raquel Welch

Some of you will recognize the photo to your left, which was taken around 1965, the year the US became involved in the Vietnam conflict, and the year Pillsbury introduced the Pillsbury Doughboy. We hadn’t landed on the moon, Woodstock was years away, and the Beatles were still performing. Ms. Welch was 25, and if you do the math you’ll see that the slice of hotness on the right is a seemingly impossible 70 years old. She must have a profound understanding of fluctuations in the space/time continuum in order to have avoided the effects of time as well as those of gravity. She was married to Hollywood wildman Robert Evans and actually feuded with Mae West, whom she called a ‘dockworker in drag.’ And even though she’s one of the most iconic sex symbols ever, she has been able to reconcile that with her faith and lifelong weekly church attendance. Somebody’s living right.

Offer includes 2 tacos, an audience with the ‘tacoteurs,’ and a free tacotopia t-shirt. Please redeem this offer at  to tacos@tacotopia.net. 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 dvd of ‘Mother, Jugs & Speed.‘

We come to my favorite time of year.  Sure, there’s not a pronounced difference in the seasons of Sur de Tejas, but at least the heat doesn’t beat you over the head.  I enjoy the Fall festivals, Halloween, and the general celebration of things harvest-related.  Up north, they’re enjoying the wonderful colors of the changing leaves – from green to shades of yellow, and red, and orange.  We notice a change in the season’s color here too, but our shades of orange and yellow show up in the decorations of the various retail establishments.  Still, we’ll see a welcome drop in the humidity.

I took note of Moon in her fullness this month.  A good time to do it because it was a special moon.   The full moon nearest the equinox, the Harvest Moon, fell on the equinox this year (making it the Harvest-est Moon) – an event that hasn’t happened in twenty-five  years and won’t happen again for a two decades.  That’s about as often as I’ve hit the gym.  Not something to be crowing about.  So with the appearance of the Super Harvest Moon, I went to the gym.  It was sobering. . .I had a fitness assessment so that I could start a wellness plan.  They assessed me, but there was no fitness to be found.  Now don’t get me wrong.  It wasn’t all bad.  But there’s certainly ample room for improvement.  I don’t want to compete in the Iron Man, or the Mr. Universe competition, but I would like to have the speed and endurance to go birding all day  and the strength to wrestle a flat tire without busting a gut.  Modest goals…attainable goals.  Already I’ve cut my taco consumption to Breakfast Taco Friday’s, tacos in foreign cities, and the occasional taco for verification or ground-truthing.

And so in celebration of Breakfast Taco Friday, Taco Show Host and I met at Las Milpas on Navigation near the Interstate.  I had a chorizo con papas en maiz, and the daily special:  a breakfast sausage with scrambled eggs on flour.  We had a bit of discussion as to why I’ve been on the chorizo and potatoes kick lately and I think the reason is chorizo.  Usually, and today was no exception, the chorizo is sauteed with already cooked potatoes so it doesn’t permeate the potato, but covers it generously.  I get to taste both separately, and together and this morning it was very good.  The corn tarp was a bit dry and had a not-all-too-unpleasant crunchiness to the edges.  The taco was large and adequately filled with goods.  The special was good.  Nothing special if you know what I mean.  It was a generous portion of sausage and egg scramble in need of salt.  The tortilla was an off-round saddle blanket with quite a bit of hand-made non-uniformity.  A hunger-buster for sure.  The thing I found funny was that there was no salsa.  Our waitress delivered a Ranchero sauce, but nothing more traditional.  Later she asked if we wanted some hot sauce and when she delivered, she mentioned that it was habanero.  And it was.  It came in a squirt bottle as well it should because you’d have to be pretty dedicated to dip a chip in it.  Taco Show Host and I thought that the day’s version might just have been the hottest we’ve seen in a taqueria.  The coffee was good and happily delivered by a doting waitress.  The building was clean on the inside, if a bit run-down out.  Pretty good and worth a try.

Salud

Our Taco Award Winner for this week is:

Sigourney Weaver

Sigourney Weaver is a true talent of our times and her list of acting accomplishments is long.  Born in New York, 1959 she began her career in the mid 70’s.  Exploding onto the scene as the no-bullshit-bad-ass Ellen Ripley in Ridley Scott’s Alien. Ms. Weaver always looks good whether killing an alien (No one makes crawling half-naked into a space suit look as good.) or playing one, a nine-foot tall one  in Avatar.  You can also see her in the movie, You Again with the larger-than-life Jamie Lee Curtis.  How can you go wrong?

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 and an extra large pair of Galaxy Quest Special Edition DVD sets to tacos@tacotopia.net.