La Gaviota Taquería

La Gaviota Taquería, a tiny restaurant—really, just a covered, unfinished patio with an attached kitchen—abuts an auto mechanic’s repair shop. More spacious is the outdoor covered seating area adjacent to the taquería. To the south is Interstate 30. Across the street in this industrial section of Oak Cliff is the city’s main post office. Only the delivery and dump trucks roaring past and area workers—letter carriers and grease monkeys—notice La Gaviota. It’s almost impossible to see from Beckley Avenue.

Yet, it was from Beckley that La Gaviota (Spanish for seagull) was spotted as my family approached the Commerce Street Bridge. I returned alone ready for garage tacos.

Zeroing in on the promise of suadero spelled out on the menu, approached ordering window inside and requested it. Unfortunately, I was unable to find out how it compared to La Banqueta’s signature offering. “I wish we had suadero,” the women taking my order confessed. Instead, I opted for a simple brisket, a fajita, a barbacoa and a chicken taco, served in a basket with fake newsprint.

Cool with lacquered grill marks, the chicken was flash-frozen and vacuum-sealed job scarcely thawed before weighing down corn tortillas.

An improvement over the poultry and a fajita as dainty as the chain-link fences surrounding the neighborhood businesses was the salty brisket, adequate because it followed a pair of disasters and only marginally better than the fat-choked barbacoa shimmering like the archipelagos of motor oil staining the ground of nearby workshops.

The experience doesn’t diminish my interest in La Gaviota’s dollar breakfast tacos. But that’s a different post, when I return I’ll enjoy bacon and egg or beans and eggs tacos on a picnic table outside. They can’t be much worse than the lunch selection.