Author Archives: Taco Trail Jose

by | October 10, 2012 · 2:32 pm

Veletta Forsythe Lill, Outgoing Dallas Arts District Executive Director & Mother of Dallas Food Trucks

Do you operate a food truck in Dallas? Have you ever patronized a Dallas food truck? Well, you need to thank Veletta Forsythe Lill. The outgoing executive director of the Dallas Arts District, home to internationally renowned arts institutions and free public events that she’s helped foster, fought to have food regulations reformed so that you could enjoy Dallas’ best-smelling truck and the whiz-bang of K-Mex, not to mention ignite the celebrity of at least one area blogger. So, thank her. Lill is a hero, a champion of arts, culture and cuisine and someone who knows what she likes in a taco.

What is your favorite taco-related childhood memory?
I confess that I grew up in the Midwest in the 1950s and ’60s so tacos were not a staple. Besides the standard casseroles and Jell-O dishes of the period, our ethnic food was more European Union than Latin American. My taco, Tex-Mex, Mexican food addition was born in the 1980s when we moved to Dallas. I am thrilled to say that our city and America has become far more sophisticated about our food over the years. Continue reading →

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by | October 9, 2012 · 1:24 pm

What I Ate on National Taco Day: Tacos al Vapor

Street tacos come in a plethora of forms: pastor/trompo, guisados, chapulines, etc. While I’ve enjoyed those, I have been unable to sample until National Taco Day a hard-to-find variety in Dallas: tacos al vapor. These tacos are steamed treats sometimes listed as tacos de canasta (basket, referring to the vessel in which they are kept warm and steamed) and tacos sudado (sweated). But at the two taquerías I visited last Thursday, they were labeled as al vapor. Along for the ride was Alex Flores, the graphic whiz who gives this blog its visual appeal.

The tacos al vapor at Taco Rico on Clarendon are priced at a dollar a piece and available by cash only. We didn’t know what to expect. For that price, we could easily be presented with cold, gummy envelopes hiding sad fillings. What we received was a plate of iridescent pockets containing deshebrada de pollo, potato and frijol, each of which could be piled with cabbage and chopped tomatoes. Continue reading →

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Filed under DFW, National Taco Day, North Texas, Oak Cliff, Reviews, Texas

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by | October 4, 2012 · 7:53 am

The North Texas Taco Festival Is Coming to Dallas

Happy National Taco Day. Great news: Dallas is finally getting a proper taco festival. The North Texas Taco Festival will be a celebration of our area’s taco diversity held in conjunction with the Deep Ellum Outdoor Market and presented by the Taco Trail and Entrée Dallas.

The event will host more than 10 taquerías, restaurants and food trucks, serving some of Dallas-Fort Worth’s favorite tacos. Among the vendors offering classic and unique tacos will be Cafeteria y Loncheria El Padrino, Rusty Taco, Rock and Roll Tacos and So-Cal Tacos. Those curious about Filipino tacos will amble into Zen Bistro & Dessert Bar.

During an Iron Chef-style competition, Dallas chefs, including Brian C. Luscher (The Grape Restaurant), will go tortilla to tortilla for the honor of best taco, as judged by a panel of local writers and discerning taco enthusiasts.

And that’s only the beginning. More exciting announcements will be made leading up to the festival.

The North Texas Taco Festival will be held Saturday, April 20, 2013, 11 a.m.–5 p.m., on the 2800 block of Main Street between Malcolm X Boulevard and Crowdus Street, alongside the Deep Ellum Outdoor Market and its 40 vendors.

For questions and sponsorship or vendor inquiries, please contact José Ralat-Maldonado at 917-854-2917 or ralatMaldonado AT Gmail dot Com or Brandon Castillo at 972-898-9227 or Brandon AT DeepEllumMarket dot com. Visit www.northtexastacofestival.com for up-to-date information.

Now, go eat some tacos.

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Filed under Dallas, Deep Ellum, DFW, events, festivals, National Taco Day, News, North Texas

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by | October 3, 2012 · 12:56 pm

Meet and Eat: Digg’s Taco Shop’s Richard Rivera

“Meet and Eat” is an occasional—rare, really—series about adventures and discussions with food writers, chefs, restaurateurs and others orbiting the food world.

The Park Cities/Upper Greenville area has a new breakfast tacos destination: Digg’s Taco Shop. The Hillcrest Avenue restaurant opened across from Southern Methodist University in February 2011. But only recently did the good, comfortable joint that bills itself as influenced by the Austin music and taco scenes begin serving breakfast tacos.

So, why did Digg’s chef Richard Rivera and business partners wait until Sept. 24 to offer breakfast tacos?

Continue reading →

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by | October 2, 2012 · 2:20 pm

Guero’s Taco Diner

San Antonio offers a few culinary amenities in the vicinity of the Stone Oak neighborhood. There’s Hacienda de los Barrios, a gastronomic playground for classic Tex-Mex, for example. Or, in the case of those jonesing for specialty breakfast tacos, there’s Guero’s Taco Diner, a small, corner store in one of the myriad, practically identical adobe-colored shopping centers.

On the way out of town, my friend and driver, Matt, and I stopped into this sleepy restaurant to fill up before the long drive to Dallas.

What we discovered was an operation that could compete with the best of the upmarket breakfast taco joints, including Tacodeli, Good 2 Go Taco and Taco Garage. (I should’ve known something was up when the owner greeted us in front of the restaurant with an honorable, trustworthy handshake.) Continue reading →

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Filed under breakfast tacos, Reviews, San Antonio, Tex-Mex, Texas

by | September 28, 2012 · 1:12 pm

Taco Ticker: Underground, on the Hill & Free

Friday on the trail means Taco Ticker, a selection of light, taco-related reading from around the web. This week’s pickings include free tacos, tacos on film and one town’s culinary transformation. Around these parts, I reviewed two amazing San Antonio breakfast taco joints as well as Mi Tierrita in Oak Cliff, where I found regional treasures (in flour tortillas). Over at Nation’s Restaurant News, Ron Ruggless announced Chili’s is testing a taco pizza in the Dallas market and Teresa Gubbins gave us a pre-opening look at Soleo Mexican Kitchen that will specialize in tacos and food from Jalisco, Mexico. Before we take in jalisciense cuisine, let’s take a trip to the Garden State.

Blueberries to tacos: South Jersey town’s shift de cuisine — Philly.com

Documentary Filmmaker Chronicles the Lives of Local Taco Truck Operators — Columbus Underground

Taco Cabana Celebrates Free Taco Day With 30,000 Chickens — QSR Magazine

Taco Bell expanding Cantina Bell menu — The Orange County Register

Taco Bell thrives inside a Cobble Hill hospital — New York Daily News

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by | September 27, 2012 · 2:43 pm

Mi Tierrita Taquería y Pupusería

It only takes one layer—gazing at the Davis Plaza storefront—to realize that El Cebolla Taquería doesn’t exist, contrary to what the red and green letters above the door indicate. And don’t bother asking the pregnant woman who stops peeling tomatillos to take your order what El Cebolla refers to. (My research indicates a soccer player.) She only knows that it should get the feminine article. The restaurant is under new management, she’ll say, after explaining you can sit wherever you’d like.

“We’re really Mi Tierrita, now. Who knows what the old name meant?” Continue reading →

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by | September 26, 2012 · 10:42 am

André Natera, Pyramid Restaurant & Bar Executive Chef

“Lengua Sessions” is a bi-monthly interview series with taco-loving chefs, bartenders, civil servants, artists, persons of interest unluckily cornered and grilled about tacos.

There has been no shortage of accolades for André Natera as the executive chef of the Fairmont Hotel Dallas’ restaurant, the Pyramid. The 35-year-old El Paso native is a wonder. He quietly transformed the Pyramid into a more than a hotel’s food establishment. Natera made the restaurant a fine-dining destination where patrons are awed by classically informed seasonal, largely locally sourced (some of it from the Fairmont’s 3,000-square-foot terrace garden) dishes. Stuffy, Natera and the Pyramid, are not. Continue reading →

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by | September 25, 2012 · 11:49 am

Taco Garage & Tito’s Mexican Restaurant

San Antonio and Tex-Mex are as inseparable as Philadelphia and cheesesteaks. The Alamo City’s influence on our homegrown cuisine is greater than any other Texas municipality. It thrust Tex-Mex into the national spotlight with chili queens, later with the puffy taco and the prized breakfast taco. The latter has been gaining traction in American cities such as New York but remains the wake-up meal of San Antone, where its burst free of the egg-and-one-protein (maybe some cheese) restrictions.

On a recent visit to San Antonio, that variety kept a friend, and I sated during a duo of breakfast stops.

The first, Taco Garage, can be best described as a Tex-Mex joint with a rock-n-roll sensibility slapped with grease lightning housed in a former auto mechanic’s shop. Jones, my amigo and driver, went for the huevos divorciados, a segmented platter of eggs, beans, bacon and green and red salsas he had lauded on the ride from Dallas. I went for a trio of substantial morning munchers.

Continue reading →

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by | September 21, 2012 · 9:23 am

Taco Ticker: Breakfast, Torched and the Best

Friday on the trail means Taco Ticker, a selection of light, taco-related reading from around the web. This week’s pickings include hipsters, Canadian television and lighting a fire under the rear of an Austin-import in Houston. Closer to home, it’s been great for tacos. Tacos La Banqueta and Tortilleria La Nueva Fresh & Hot, my top two taquerías in town, were given Best Of nods by the Dallas Observer. Cafe Maya, my go-to restaurant for tacos de cochinita pibil was listed as having the best queso. Also, the weekly’s food critic, Scott Reitz, added a barbacoa de cachete taco to his 100 Favorite Dishes of the year. Goghee re-opened in a larger space and will celebrate its grand opening tomorrow. Farther afield, in Roanoke, Chef Jason Boso unveiled his new concept, Tacos & Avocados, giving the suburbs a taste of the specialty taco craze that is running its course in cities. Taco Bell’s popularity, however, is unwavering.

Passion Pit Address Taco Bell ‘Take A Walk’ Controversy: “It’s An Amazing Opportunity” — Fresh 102.7  FM

Tepid Torchy’s: A beloved Austin food truck goes corporate, and while much of the charm is lost, the breakfast tacos still deliver — Houston Press

‘Taco Wars’ Is Coming to Tuscon — Tuscon Weekly

What to Eat in Austin: Breakfast Tacos — The Daily Meal

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