There's something almost sacred about a street taco.
It's one of those foods that proves we've spent far too much time complicating dinner. You don't need tweezers. You don't need foam. You don't need a chef explaining the provenance of the onion.
You need a little corn tortilla, preferably warm and slightly charred, overloaded with meat that has spent some quality time with fire. A fistful of fresh cilantro. Chopped onion. Maybe a spoonful of house-made salsa if you're feeling adventurous. A violent squeeze of lime.
That's it.
When those few things are done right, there aren't many better things to eat on this planet.
I'd driven past this place more times than I can count, always giving it the same promise: Tomorrow. I'll stop tomorrow.
Well, tomorrow finally came.
I ordered three steak tacos and one al pastor.
And when they arrived? Goddamn, they looked good.
They looked exactly like street tacos are supposed to look. small tortillas nearly collapsing under an obscene amount of meat, cilantro and onion scattered over the top, lime waiting patiently on the side. Nothing fancy. Nothing precious. Just four beautiful little tacos begging to be eaten.
So I started with the steak.
No salsa. No lime. No camouflage.
I wanted to know whether the taco, naked and defenseless, could stand on its own.
I went in raw.
And was immediately assaulted by salt.
Not well-seasoned. Not aggressively seasoned. Salt.
An absolute sodium war crime.
The kind of taco that should come with a complimentary blood-pressure cuff and a concerned-looking cardiologist standing nearby.
I took another bite, thinking maybe I'd hit an unusually salty pocket.
Nope.
Salt.
I squeezed on some lime. Added salsa. Surely a little acid and heat would cut through it.
They did not.
There was no escaping it.
Underneath all that salt was another problem: the meat had an oddly pasty texture. Maybe it was the seasoning. Maybe it was the preparation. I don't know. But instead of little bits of beef with some chew, char and personality, it had this strange, soft, almost processed mouthfeel.
And yes, these tacos were filled to the absolute gills with meat.
Normally that's a wonderful thing.
Here, it felt like punishment.
I finished one.
That was enough.
So I moved on to the al pastor, hoping for salvation.
Maybe a little sweetness. Some chile. Some caramelization. Perhaps that beautiful little pineapple note that can rescue fatty pork and make al pastor one of civilization's great achievements.
Instead, curry bomb.
You could have handed me this taco, told me it was some sort of Indian-Mexican fusion experiment, and I would have believed you without hesitation.
The cumin--or whatever spice combination was responsible--completely dominated everything else. There was no balance. No sweetness. No recognizable pineapple note. No moment where the pork actually got to taste like pork.
Just spice.
And, naturally, more salt.
So much salt.
Looking at the meat, maybe I should have seen it coming. It appeared absolutely coated in seasoning, as though someone had emptied the spice cabinet onto the pork and decided restraint was for cowards.
The texture wasn't doing it any favors either.
Soft. Grainy. Almost as if the meat had been heavily seasoned and then boiled into submission.
Two bites.
I was done.
And I hate writing that.
I hate shitting on a small business, particularly one putting out food that clearly has some effort behind it. Nobody opens a taco truck dreaming about disappointing people. Maybe I caught them on a bad day. Maybe somebody got heavy-handed with the seasoning. Maybe the regular cook was out. Maybe my expectations had climbed impossibly high after driving past the place for weeks imagining how good it might be.
All of that is possible.
But food only gets judged on the plate sitting in front of me.
And the tacos sitting in front of me today simply weren't good.
They were beautiful.
They were generous.
They looked like everything I wanted them to be.
Then I ate them.
In the wonderfully broad universe of street taco, from transcendent little tortillas eaten standing over a styrofoam plate to sad late-night mistakes you immediately regret, these landed firmly on the wrong end of the spectrum.
I came hungry.
I left with three unfinished tacos and enough sodium in my bloodstream to preserve a ham.
Maybe it was an off day.
I hope it was.
But I probably won't be back to find out. read more
