Thanx. Added to cart.
Hard or Soft Shells are equally valid for Tacos, Fuck your "Only soft shells are Authentic" bullshit
In the best taqueria on the Central Coast ( La Super-Rica Taqueria in Santa Barbara) they just slap them up by hand while you watch - no press. But I think the two tiny Mexican women doing it have superpowers.
Not around here they don’t. The only place in town that I know of where you can buy tortillas that were made that day is a Salvadorean restaurant that makes them by hand, and Salvadorean tortillas are too thick to fold - they’re about the size and thickness of a frozen pancake, and I’m not quite sure how you’re supposed to use them, but I tear them into three or four pieces and scoop carne guisada onto the pieces before shoving them in my face.
I made taco salad in a similar fashion once for my sister and mother when I was in charge of prepping dinner while sister picked up mom from work, and when I opened the box of taco shells I discovered they were all broken in half. I crumbled them and tossed them with the lettuce, shredded cheddar, chopped onions, jalapeno slices, and jar of salsa, plated that, smeared a layer of beans on top, then scooped the taco-seasoned ground beef on top of that and finished with a dollop of sour cream. I think I got an A on presentation, at least.
Are those papusas?
Pupusas are Salvadoran tortillas stuffed with a filling of some sort before being cooked on the griddle. You roll the masa dough into a golfball, make a hole with your thumb, stuff the filling in, then close and flatten it before cooking. The filling is usually some combination of white cheese, refried black beans, chicharron (which usually means pork rinds, but in Salvadoran cooking it’s more of a pork machaca), spinach, squash, or loroco (a vine which has a hard to describe taste I can only really describe as “green”), and they’re usually served with curtido (a kind of spicy vinegar-based coleslaw) and tomato sauce.
The Salvadoran tortillas themselves of which I speak are of a similar size as your typical pupusa, but don’t have any filling.
That is a real shame.
Sure, good homemade tortillas are terrific, but it’s really nice to be able to just run out to just about any store and get perfectly good ones you know were made that morning.
And I wouldn’t trust any Tex-Mex place that didn’t make their own.
Tex-Mex isn’t really a thing in the Pacific Northwest. I recall a recent thread on the Seattle subreddit asking about Tex-Mex restaurants in Seattle and the consensus was that there aren’t any. We basically have three varieties of Mexican food around here;
- The taco truck style which revolves around street tacos and mulitas and San Francisco style burritos stuffed full of rice and beans, and sometimes also birria because it’s trendy these days
- The sit-down restaurant that brings chips and salsa to the table before you order and features giant margaritas and fork-and-knife burritos doused in sauce and fajitas served in a sizzling cast iron skillet, and serves its meals on a giant shallow plate with rice and beans and a “salad” of shredded lettuce and tomato slices
- The San Diego taco shop style, with giant just-meat-and-salsa-and-cheese burritos and carne asada fries and rolled tacos with guacamole, which was nonexistant when I moved up here twenty years ago but has made vast inroads in the past decade
Some of the sit-down restaurants might have a tortilla machine, but the trucks and the San Diego style places are getting their tortillas from Mission and Guerrero just like the grocery stores do.
Not unsurprising. Had a post-college road trip that passed through the random back end of Oregon. Our dinner choices in that town were McDonald’s or a questionable ‘Mexican’ place. Should have chosen McDonald’s, and it wouldn’t have been close.
Had a friend go to grad school in Illinois (UIUC) and the massive fail she reported was when the local Tex-Mex place asked what flavor margarita she wanted when she ordered one. Asking that question is by itself a major red flag.
On the lighter side, had another friend work in Germany for a few years and there was a “Tex-Mex” restaurant that offered “margaritas” made, apparently, with vodka as the primary liquor. But it’s not like there were any expectations of anything close to authentic there and after a few of those, it’s not like you’re noticing much of anything.
Personally, the best margarita I ever had was at a sit-down place in Oregon (Corvallis, which I don’t think is part of the “random back end”), which was made with jalapeno-infused tequila and a whole fresh jalapeno as garnish with a tajin-salt rim. Spicy + sour + salty makes for a pretty delicious combo.
Sounds pretty good. Usually don’t go for the really sweet ones or the ones with different rim spices, but there’s are some prickly pear margaritas around here that are incredibly good, too.
The place we ended up at was not far from the Nevada border, so pretty far from the I-5 corridor that seems to represent the vast majority of the Oregon population.
Ah, yes. Here in Cascadia we don’t speak of the lands east of the mountains. They’re best regarded with terror and apprehension, and should be travelled through at the maximum permissible speed with the doors locked and the windows rolled up.
It’s practically another state.
There’s a fantastic family-owned and operated Mexican restaurant in my town (Auburn, WA) which is the best Mexican food I’ve ever had. It’s your typical “bring chips and salsa to the table” place but the food and service is exceptional. We’ve been going there since they opened, and they watched my youngest daughter grow up from a baby (she’s now 8) and treat us like family.
There are some real gems like that even in the PNW. That’s the only one I’ve personally found, though.
Which one is that? My sister and her husband and kids live in Auburn, and I may have to keep it in mind in case circumstances ever call for a big family occasion dinner.
It’s… green.
Garcia’s. They are awesome,
I’ll have to keep that in mind. There’s a regional chain called Puerto Vallarta that I think is pretty solid as far as sit-down restaurants go, and Garcia’s menu looks pretty similar. (They even have the same combo I usually get at Puerto Vallarta - chili colorado, chili verde, and a chile relleno with rice, beans, and tortillas.)
Puerto Vallarta isn’t bad, I’ve eaten at their restaurants multiple times, but it’s not nearly as good as Garcia’s.
I’m not sure if it’s because the staff is actually from Mexico (they’re frequently traveling back there to see family) but it’s a step up from the usual chain places.
I’ve got a silver-colored version of that same Victoria press (it’s still iron, just plated or something), and it wasn’t any more expensive than that.
Waiting on some cauliflower tacos right now. New item on the local taqueria menu!