Category Archives: Reviews

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 →

7 Comments

Filed under Dallas, DFW, North Texas, Oak Cliff, Reviews, Texas

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

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 →

5 Comments

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

by | September 18, 2012 · 8:41 am

Fito’s #2

Image: Ben E./Yelp

The writing is on the wall at Fito’s #2, a West Davis Street taquería with walls bearing Spanish aphorisms. My favorite translates to “Look at your mother-in-law with the same wonder you look at the far-away stars.” Above the kitchen door: “Love enters through the kitchen.” A mural of lotería cards (resembling a Tarot set but used to play a Bingo-like game) conceals the bathrooms.

It’s all very sweet. It also shouldn’t have been a surprise. The building’s colorful façade was a dead giveaway I ignored. What I couldn’t ignore and what led me to Fito’s #2 was the promise of trompo, pork that takes its name from its shape (a spinning top) and the vertical spit on which it is prepared. Essentially, trompo is traditional pastor, a local rarity. Not many Dallas-Fort Worth restaurants have the space and patience to allow heat to work its quiet art on a large hunk of pork. Continue reading →

7 Comments

Filed under Dallas, DFW, North Texas, Oak Cliff, Reviews

Tagged as , , , , , ,

by | September 13, 2012 · 10:54 am

Plato Loco Mexican Cafe

My family likes to hike, even the cantankerous three-year-old who pretends to lead a platoon (his mother and I) through Texas’ hilly wilds. Whenever and wherever we can, the three of us take to trails in search of animal tracks and “clues”—to what, the boy won’t tell us—in step behind our son who periodically commands us to “keep your eyes peeled, soldiers” or stop so he can take a picture with his toy Vtech digital camera.

After an easy hike at Cedar Hill State Park, we stopped for lunch at Plato Loco Mexican Cafe. The boy’s reward for behaving well was a crunchy taco—“no lettuce or cheese or chocolate”—while the missus and I grubbed on a trio of Tex-Mex standards. Aluminum piñata lamps and strands of Mexican folk art cut-out paper, papel picado, hanged from the ceiling. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under Cedar Hill, North Texas, Reviews

Tagged as , , , , ,

by | September 11, 2012 · 7:06 am

One Shot: Off-Site Kitchen

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

The Design District is coming up in the world—the restaurant world. It began with the 2010 opening of the Meddlesome Moth, a highfalutin gastropub from the team behind the Flying Saucer beer-bar chain (Shannon Wynn, Keith Schlabs, Larry Richardson and co.). When Oak opened in December 2011 near the Moth, critics were floored by the fine-dining destination. Taco Stop served its first eponymous offerings in February 2012. The anticipated October opening of Matt McCallister’s restaurant, FT33, will probably top foodies’ Best Of 2012 lists. Also destined for year-end accolades is Nick Badovinus’ Off-Site Kitchen, a casual luncheonette evoking an Alpine beer hall-fast food joint hybrid. Among the menu items is the much ballyhooed Crispy Sloppy Taco. Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under Dallas, Design District, DFW, Reviews, Tex-Mex, Texas

Tagged as , , , ,

by | September 6, 2012 · 4:58 pm

Tortas El Jacalito

The taquerías and Mexican restaurants west of Hampton Road along West Davis Street in Dallas are, at turns, imposing with blacked-out windows, ramshackle in construction or irresistible in the form of a three-dimensional menu. Tortas El Jacalito, which is beyond Cockrell Road, is of the latter stripe.

From the street, potential customers can read of huaraches (doughy sandal-shaped tortilla dishes excellent for clearing the vegetable drawer), sopes (thick corn masa patties usually topped with refried beans, lettuce, tomato, meat and salsa) and, of course, tacos. Inside, is much of the same, brighter, even.  Pop art-style portraits of Golden Age of Mexican Cinema era stars, including leading lady María Félix and clown Cantinflas, best known in the United States for his performance as Passepartout in Around the World in 80 Days, line the eatery’s walls.

As remarkable as El Jacalito’s trappings are, it’s not all that is noteworthy. Continue reading →

3 Comments

Filed under Dallas, DFW, North Texas, Oak Cliff, Reviews, Texas

Tagged as , , , ,

by | September 4, 2012 · 5:56 pm

Vivo Restaurant

My quest for taco knowledge and great tacos is a multifaceted one. There are just so many types of tacos developed during millennia of history to maintain an unwavering focus. Lately, I’ve been fascinated by tacos of the fish and puffy variety, and during a trip to Austin for the Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival, a friend and I got to indulge in some of the latter at Vivo.

A restaurant surrounded by a dusty lot along Manor Road—one of two locations—near standard-bearer El Chilito, Vivo is difficult to enter. Don’t go around the front. Turn to the rear of the eatery in a converted bungalow. Then, find a business easy to enjoy your first time.

The interior dining room is dominated by warm burgundy, contemporary art and a labyrinth to the graffiti bombed bathroom. It’s a lounge space for delectable Tex-Mex: cheese enchiladas, fajitas or chile con queso. Outside, where my lunch companion and I sat, was a verdant space filled with mosaic tile-topped cafe tables, wobbly metal chairs, plotted ferns, evergreens, vines and succulents concealed from the street, all the better for us to enjoy our puffy tacos. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Austin, Reviews, Tex-Mex, Texas

Tagged as , , , ,

by | August 30, 2012 · 11:27 am

Taqueria Jalisco

Today, Marshall Scott Owens (@WestTX_BBQ on Twitter) drops a guest post on the Taco Trail. The Lubbock resident is a financial adviser at a Fortune 500 company. More importantly, he likes “BBQ, tacos, burgers, and brew,” and, he says, “If college football was a food I would eat as much as I could.” You can read Owens’ guest post on Full Custom Gospel BBQ here. Before you do that, though, read his review of Taqueria Jalisco in Lubbock. It might come in handy during the Texas Tech games against Oklahoma University and University of Texas this fall.

I went to Jalisco under the guise of a “romantic” date with my girlfriend, but I was really there to review what I think are the best tacos in Lubbock.

Taqueria Jalisco isn’t your run-of-the-mill Tex-Mex restaurant. The menu tends to offer more than the typical “food smothered in cheese then ran through a pizza oven.” People commonly refer to Jalisco as Tex-Mex, but those people tend to think all Mexican food in Texas is Tex-Mex. Although I have never been to Guadalajara, I would like to think Jalisco lives up to the name, and it is anything but just Tex-Mex. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under Guest post, Reviews, Texas

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

by | August 7, 2012 · 8:45 am

Taquería Melis

Having fulfilled Mrs. Ralat’s wish to visit the new, jammed Trader Joe’s in Fort Worth, it was my turn for some wish fulfillment. That’s how we ended up at Taquería Melis, a taco joint carved out of a wood-and-corrugated house overlooking the Union Pacific Davidson rail yard and no indoor seating.

From the funhouse-leveled porch could be heard a telenovelas’ typical shouts and pleas. Two picnic tables were sheltered under corrugated metal. A third was near the Vickery Boulevard sidewalk. A stenciled menu on a wide wall and one next to the sliding-glass counter window made me confident we wouldn’t be leaving Taquería Melis hungry. (Hunger isn’t an option when a breakfast burrito is on offer.)

Leaving satisfied was another matter. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under DFW, Fort Worth, North Texas, Reviews

Tagged as , , , ,

by | July 31, 2012 · 2:03 pm

Taquería La Providencia

Just off the Jefferson Boulevard taco corridor on Madison Avenue is Taquería La Providencia, a restaurant decorated with baubles, athletic trophies and Mexican folk art. It’s easily missed, but once inside customers find a mixed bag of tacos seasoned with sonorous telenovelas.

Unlike Mexican soap operas, La Providencia offers a surprising twist. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under DFW, Oak Cliff, Reviews, Texas

Tagged as , , , , , ,