Author Archives: Taco Trail Jose

by | October 26, 2012 · 4:18 pm

Taco Ticker: The South, The Revamped & The Stolen

Another Friday, another Taco Internet roundup of the week’s news. Around these parts, I reviewed the Taco Pronto Cafe, a Tex-Mex diner in the Medical District, and El Pueblo Restaurant along East Jefferson Boulevard. The former trades in top-notch handmade flour tortillas, while the latter serves the best carnitas in Dallas. Alice Laussade, the Dallas Observer’s Cheap Bastard answers taco-related questions of considerable import (to me, anyway) in the latest installment of Lengua Sessions. She’ll be serving her pizza creations (mutations?) at Cane Rosso, Monday, Oct. 29, as part of the restaurant’s guest chef series. Proceeds will benefit the National MS Society.

Nearby, Teresa Gubbins shares her thoughts about Tacos & Avocados in a Fort Worth Star-Telegram review. She says the tacos at Jason Boso’s upscale taqueria concept are “generous without being unwieldy.” City of Ate, shows us photos of the Taco Cabana re-design. Central Track takes one for the team, spending an entire day at Fuel City and discovers with gas station tacos comes gas station fashion.

Elsewhere, we have the intersection of Mexican and Southern foodways, Brad Pitt and free tacos for everyone. Continue reading →

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by | October 25, 2012 · 9:51 am

El Pueblo Restaurant

Nearly two years ago, the corner unit at 525 E. Jefferson Boulevard, formerly a furniture store, had windows blocked by craft paper and a sign promising El Pueblo was coming soon. I watched for months as construction progressed until the restaurant was ready to serve customers and—for some unknown reason—waited a few more months to visit the restaurant. I shouldn’t have done that. I had deprived myself of a worthy addition to the east end of Jefferson, one offering marvelous carnitas tacos. Why I waited until now to write a review is anyone’s guess. El Pueblo is one of the few Mexican restaurants I patronize often and have made it a stop on a taco tour of East Jefferson joints, just for its carnitas.

Every bite of the pork fried in lard was crunchy, salty and silken, a sight to behold in soft, bumpy yellow corn tortillas fresh enough to make a destructive oil bath unnecessary. Staring down at the strips of mahogany, sienna and black coursing through the filling it was obvious, here was taco beauty. If only the tortillas were fluffy and irregularly shaped handmade rounds. Continue reading →

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by | October 24, 2012 · 10:39 am

Alice Laussade, The Cheap Bastard & Meat Fight CEO

Alice Laussade laughs in the face of bar soap. The James Beard Award-nominated columnist for Dallas Observer’s food section likes to write using dirty words and doesn’t care about your delicate constitution. You either get the joke, or you don’t. That’s what she’s like on paper and on the Internet. But if you know Alice, you’ll see that, yes, she has that saucy quality, but she’s also a kind person, happy to help friend or stranger.

Case in point: Meat Fight, an annual barbecue competition benefiting the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. This year, the smoked-meats soiree is going big, moving from Laussade’s backyard to Sons of Hermann Hall. The Deep Ellum venue will host some of Dallas’ top-dog chefs competing in teams for plaudits handed down by an intimidating panel of judges, including pit wizards Justin Fourton and Aaron Franklin as well as BBQ writer Daniel Vaughn.

If you haven’t already purchased your tickets to Meat Fight, you’re out of luck. The fundraiser is sold out. However, there is room at Cane Rosso, where Laussade will be making face with the oven on Monday, Oct. 29, as part of the pizzeria’s guest chef series. Her turn with the paddle will also benefit the National MS Society.

Did I just blow your cover, Alice? Whatever. You already answered the “Lengua Sessions” interview questions.  Speaking of which: Continue reading →

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by | October 23, 2012 · 11:49 am

The Taco Pronto Café

Amid construction, industrial workshops and medical office buildings sits the Taco Pronto Café, a greasy spoon with house-made flour tortillas and specialties like spam and beans. A wood-carved portly, bearded man, tattooed with the years of greetings and messages from customers and adorned with religious paraphernalia stands just inside the entrance. It’s the kind of eating establishment that even when frantically busy is a place where one can take a load off, sip coffee and decompress with comforting tacos, maybe menudo.

Although we didn’t request the stomach soup, my family did order the fresh flour tortillas the waitress recommended. “The corn tortillas are store-bought. Go with the flour.” They transformed what could have been mediocre tacos into meritorious ones packed with stick-to-your-ribs goods, particularly the long list of breakfast tacos served all day.

Continue reading →

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by | October 20, 2012 · 9:55 am

Taco Ticker: Exoticism (Sort of ), Stolen Bases and Tacos in the Desert

Another Friday, another Taco Internet roundup of the week’s news. Around these parts, I reviewed Taco Party—a Mexico City-influenced lonchera serving up a couple of gems, including fried potato tacos—and the fish tacos of new Oak Cliff sports bar PhD – Pour House Dallas, baby sister of the 17-year-old Pour House in Fort Worth, that finally secured its liquor license. While tacos as a whole were pretty good, they were oversauced but wrapped in terrific, locally-produced tortillas. James Scott of DallasVegan.com took time to chat with me about tacos and the third annual Texas State Veggie Fair, a free, outdoor festival he founded in part because even after going vegan, he pined for the State Fair of Texas’ fried food.

Nearby, Dallas Observer food critic Scott Reitz, stops into Monica’s Nueva Cocina and shares how to cut off hangovers at the pass (hint: it involves Velvet Taco’s breakfast tacos and crazy-good elotes). Teresa Gubbins calls out bully Tex-Mex-for-rich-people chain Mi Cocina for suing family-owned Honduran restaurant Mi Cocina Hondureña in Garland. Kim Pierce at the Dallas Morning News sings the praises of queso, while restaurant critic Leslie Brenner calls them awful. You know what’s not awful? The Arizona Taco Festival, going down this weekend. The producers are an inspiration who have lined up a wonderland of tacos, tequila and awesome for two days of required attendance for anyone in the vicinity of Scottsdale. And then there’s this: Continue reading →

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by | October 19, 2012 · 10:21 am

One Shot: PhD — Pour House Dallas

“One Shot” is an occasional series reviewing non-taquerías’ tacos.

Did you hear the one about the sports bar that opened without a liquor license? If you’re into the Dallas bar and restaurant scene, you probably have. When PhD — Pour House Dallas, the local outpost of 17-year-old Pour House in Fort Worth, welcomed its first customers, the watering hole had a BYOB policy, although it did serve food.

I visited PhD last week on the day it was finally permitted to serve booze for a pint of Peticolas and a plate of fish tacos, the establishment’s best-selling menu item.

The beer was amazing. The tacos were messy. Continue reading →

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by | October 18, 2012 · 10:13 am

James Scott, DallasVegan.com & Texas State Veggie Fair Founder

Photo credit: Sylvia Elzafon

You could stand to eat more vegetables. We all could. In fact, veggie tacos are too often overlooked, much to our detriment. James Scott is here to help.

Scott decided to eat a vegetarian diet approximately eight years ago. He wanted to lead a healthier life and decided a month-long trial would be sufficient. One month wasn’t enough. Two years later Scott went vegan. He also founded the website DallasVegan.com. However, he didn’t want to leave the joy of the State Fair of Texas’ fried hurt behind. (As much as we disparage the Big Tex Choice Awards, we ought not lie to ourselves. Texans, especially Dallasites, look forward to the announcement of the finalists each year. Fried butter!)  Thus was born the idea of the Texas State Veggie Fair. The third annual celebration of vegetarianism and veganism—and fried food!—will be held this Sunday, Oct. 21, in a larger venue, Reverchon Park. It’s a free, family-friendly event that has more than tripled in size from the first year in 2010, says Scott. But it wasn’t always soyrizo and tempeh. And tacos needn’t be greasy packages of muscle tissue.

Before you attend the Texas State Veggie Fair, read what Scott has to say about tacos… Continue reading →

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by | October 16, 2012 · 3:01 pm

Taco Party

No city’s food truck scene is complete without taco trucks, and if they’re good, even better. Thankfully, Dallas’ taco trucks are exactly that and Taco Party, the latest rig to roll out, continues the trend. But it’s different.

Instead of the aggressive flavors common in north of the border tacos from our area’s other food trucks, Taco Party, owned and operated by cousins Rafael Rico and Eduardo Ramirez, offers the nuanced, dialed-down flavors of Mexico. There are exceptions, of course, namely the brisket with ancho sauce and the fish with a standard chipotle crema accompaniment.

The confit pork in green sauce (similar to a guisado verde) is an impressive mound of cubed meat laced with a tomatillo salsa that could’ve been a touch tighter. Tucked into the springy pork were pulpy strands of fat that completed a terrific taco with teasing heat in non-greasy yellow corn tortillas.

Continue reading →

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by | October 12, 2012 · 10:36 am

Taco Ticker: Julia Child, Hangovers and Xoconostle

After taking last week off to let the big news about Dallas’ first bona fide taco festival sink in, Taco Ticker is back with a roundup of this week’s taco news. On the Taco Trail, I reviewed rare—for Dallas—tacos al vapor, steamed tacos hawked by myriad street-side taqueros in Mexico. Veletta Forsythe Lill, the outgoing executive director of the Dallas Arts District and driving force behind the success of food trucks in town, took time to answer taco-related questions. Finally, the week’s second review hit up Mi Fondita, a new restaurant owned and operated by natives of Michoacán state, Mexico. Yes, regional specialties are available. And, yes, it’s worth multiple visits.

Elsewhere, on the Taco Internet, we follow in Julia Child’s footsteps, put the entire Tacodeli to the test and oh so much more: Continue reading →

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by | October 11, 2012 · 11:35 am

Mi Fondita Restaurant

The yellow, peach and blue restaurant at Jefferson Boulevard and Tyler Street isn’t shy about advertising its daily specials, whether on the windows or a sidewalk board on which the deals are scrawled in permanent marker. Prominent among the announcements is that the flour and corn tortillas are made by hand—not in a press. By hand.

“Platters only,” the woman explained as she patted her hands back and forth demonstrating the method used to shape the tortillas. Unfortunately, I hadn’t ordered any entrées and she told me this nugget of critical information as I was paying my bill.

I knew I should’ve ordered the rajas con queso, I thought to myself. Better yet, another of the house specialties, like quail, grilled or fried with optional salsa roja. The pozole, a hominy stew believed to have originated in Michoacán state, the homeland of Mi Fondita’s owners, was also tempting.

Continue reading →

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