Category Archives: Texas

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

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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 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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by | September 12, 2012 · 11:26 am

The Tacos of Southern Methodist University

A version of this post was originally published on MSN Postbox, which until the project was terminated Sept. 1 was my day job. The piece was part of the website’s Campus Guide topic. Now that students have settled into the course load I’d like to share it with Taco Trail readers and recommend several places to get your taco fix near Southern Methodist University.

Pizza fuels many a college town in the Northeast. In Texas, however, higher education finds nourishment in tacos. No other Dallas university campus is as sustained by taco shops and Tex-Mex restaurants than that of Southern Methodist University.

Across from SMU on Hillside Avenue is Digg’s Taco Shop. The fast-casual operation takes inspiration from Austin’s music scene (wall-mounted LPs), but it’s not a dump with sticky counters. The restaurant’s clean orange and white color scheme marks it as acceptable for mom and dad on parents’ day. More than acceptable are the mahi and the carnitas tacos, kicked up a notch with a margarita ice pop. Continue reading →

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Filed under breakfast tacos, Dallas, DFW, North Texas, Tex-Mex, Texas

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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 →

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

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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 →

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

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by | September 5, 2012 · 10:19 am

Tacolab: San Antonio Puffy Tacos

Last weekend, I traveled to San Antonio for some taco research, predominately of the puffy kind. While I was in the Alamo City, I had the opportunity to meet Diana Barrios-Treviño of Los Barrios Mexican Restaurant & La Hacienda de Los Barrios, San Antonio institutions. She was kind enough to show me how puffy tacos are fried at La Hacienda, which I recorded. The video makes for the perfect introduction to a new series on The Taco Trail: Tacolab. Each Tacolab installment will go inside home and restaurant kitchens for demonstrations, hijinks, disasters, etc. There might or might not be lab coats from time to time.

So, without further ado: Continue reading →

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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 →

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by | August 30, 2012 · 1:23 pm

Is Cowboy Chow’s Transformation Into a Taco Concept Too Late?

Photo: Tacos & Avocados/Facebook

By now you’ve probably read that Jason Boso of Twisted Root fame is closing the last of his Cowboy Chow restaurants. Whereas the Dallas location closed in May 2011 and was replaced by Buzzbrews, the second Cowboy Chow, this one in Roanoke, will become Tacos & Avocados, Bosso’s new fast-casual specialty taquería concept.

Menu selections listed in the press release, including a rib-eye steak taco with bacon-onion marmalade, blue cheese crumbles and potato straws as well as a mango-chile pepper paleta and daily fish taco specials, seem appetizing enough, but what separates Boso’s steak taco from any other gussied-up beef option? Continue reading →

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