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As part of my tireless quest to get some of my favorite restaurants to offer tacos, I offer you the special holiday three-course dinner from one of the best joints in town, Mesa Veracruz Coastal Cuisine. The Oak Cliff eatery, owned by chefs Raul and Olga Reyes, is a pioneer of regional Mexican food in Dallas—and it’s going to be open Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve.
See the full menu below. Continue reading
DFW Truck for Tots — On Saturday December 8, 2012 from 11:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m., 25 Dallas and Fort Worth food trucks are gathering at the corner of Elm Street and Gaston Avenue in Deep Ellum (2505 Elm Street, Dallas, TX) for a massive toy drive for the Dallas-Fort Worth Chapter of Toys for Tots. More than 20 United States Marines will be on hand to take toy donations and guests are encouraged to bring a new, unwrapped toy for a needy child. Pictures with Santa will be available in addition to live music, bounce houses and more than 50 vendors for holiday shopping.
In partnership with local schools including W.E. Greiner Exploratory Arts Academy and Lincoln High School, students will be encouraged to collect toys and bring them to the event with their family. There will also be a performance by the Lincoln High School Tiger Marching Band. More than 25 confirmed food trucks will be on-site, including Rock & Roll Tacos, Rockstar Bakeshop, Easy Slider Truck, Ssahm BBQ, Gepetto’s Pizza, Three Lions, The Gastro Bomber and more.
Guests are encouraged to ride the DART Green Line and get off at the Deep Ellum Station, which is across the street from the event. Guests coming from North Dallas can ride any line into downtown and transfer to the Green Line without worrying about the hassle of parking. This event is brought to you by DFW Food Truck Group, Dallas Area Rapid Transit, Deep Ellum Outdoor Market and other local sponsors. Continue reading
Filed under Dallas, Deep Ellum, DFW, events, food truck, News, Texas
I’m beginning to re-think my list of Dallas’ top taco joints, thanks to Los Torres Taquería , a family-owned spot that opened in June. The restaurant specializes in the cuisine of Sinaloa state in northwest Mexico, serving barbacoa roja de chivo (goat barbacoa seasoned with chiles), birria de chivo (a cauldron of chest-warming goat meat in an orangy-red broth) and chivo tatemado (the roasted equivalent of birria cooked in a large clay pot). They’re available as platters, by the pound as well as in tacos in handmade tortillas, if requested. Request them. Continue reading
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
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
Filed under Dallas, interviews, Lengua Sessions
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.
Filed under breakfast tacos, Dallas, Medical District, North Texas, Reviews, Tex-Mex
“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
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
Filed under Dallas, interviews, Lengua Sessions
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.
Filed under Dallas, DFW, food truck, North Texas, Reviews
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.
Filed under Dallas, North Texas, Oak Cliff, Reviews, Texas
The Taco Trail 