Tacos are a work of art at FundaciÓn
Uncomplicated but excellent
Ataco is a simple thing: a folded tortilla, a little meat, a vegetable garnish and a sauce. It’s also a work of art at Taco Fundación, which offers nearly a dozen variations on that theme, all of them uncomplicated but eloquently excellent. We sampled almost everything on offer one weekday lunch hour, and were hard pressed to pick a favorite.
Tacos al pastor, or sheepherder’s style, are the commonest of northern Mexico tacos, here made with pork and embellished with a hint of pineapple. I’m not fond of this meat-and-fruit combo — I hate pizza “Hawaii,” too — but my guest was one who loves that ham-and-pineapple thing and she thought only that there should have been more pineapple in Taco Fundación’s version.
I liked the barbacoa taco, though. It’s tempting to conflate this Spanish word with our own barbecue, but it’s the opposite, really: sauceless braised beef, nicely tenderized and at Taco Fundación, garnished with an excellent cilantro pesto and a little fresh pico de gallo. I left convinced that a session with cilantro and my own blender would be the next of my kitchen experiments.
We also approved of the chicken mole tacos, shredded braised chicken paired with crema — a uniquely Mexican flourish that’s not quite sour cream and not sweet cream, either. Mexican cooking expert Diana Kennedy stipulates that it’s best made with fresh cream soured by a very little buttermilk, if you’re interested in conjuring up some at home.
Taco Fundación offered three versions of seafood tacos the day we visited, and we sampled them all. Our favorite was made with small shrimp, poached and combined with shredded cabbage, the standard garnish for all seafood tacos in Mexico. The sauce was another variation on crema, this one tinted pale green from avocado.
The straight-ahead fish tacos were standard: a piece of breaded and fried white filet, garnished again with cabbage, and laced with crema jazzed up with chipotle. Also on offer was an oyster taco, one large oyster again breaded and deepfried, with the obligatory cabbage and chipotle trimmings.
From the vegetarian side of the menu, we tried “verdures 2,” a combination of avocado, potato and artichokes, with a garnish of white cotija cheese. Taco Fundación offers combos of sweet potato, kale and pine nuts, or portabella mushrooms and onions, with more of that cilantro pesto and a slightly different but still bland Oaxaca cheese.
All the tacos on the menu are priced between $3 and $3.50, and the seven we ordered were more than enough for lunch for three. We rounded out the meal with a side of pintos ($2), perfectly cooked and seasoned only with onions and a very little garlic. Guacamole ($2) is also on the menu. To drink, we could have chosen Mexican Coke, served in the classic bottle. We stuck to water, plain and simple.
Not the least of the things we really liked about Taco Fundación is that it’s located in the old Bert’s Burger Bowl on North Guadalupe, now scrubbed and freshly repainted. Seating is minimalist: a half a dozen bar stools at a wood plank counter faced with windows. We would rather have sat outside, at another counter under that small portal or at the huge picnic tables in front, but alas, it was cold and rainy. Or we could have taken our food home or sat in the car, under another shady portal, which is what most of the crowd — and it was a huge crowd that lunchtime — had opted to do.
If Taco Fundación’s name seems vaguely familiar, it’s because longtime Santa Fe restaurateur Brian Knox is behind it — as well as Shake Foundation, his equally simple hamburger shack, on Cerrillos Road that opened a couple of years ago and is wildly popular, as this taco place seems set to be. The menu at the older restaurant is a little more extensive — burgers plus milk shakes and other soda fountain confections — so we can hope Taco Fundación, too, will develop more choices soon.