Our Lady of Mercy for Houston’s taco-starved masses
I’m ready for it to get cold outside. Not because the sensation of constantly being attacked by blow dryers has somehow managed to lose its appeal for me – not at all. The real reason is because I want breakfast tacos.
Last fall I was living in a garage apartment in River Oaks and every Saturday morning I had to wake up at the crack of dawn and drive out to Cypress. And naturally what ended up happening was I’d wake up, fly past the post office on Dunlavy – where two lanes merge, unforgivingly, onto a bike lane – hook a left on West Dallas, take a right on Shepherd, vault over Memorial Park, only to find myself stranded in the usual Saturday morning, crack-of-dawn line at Laredo Taqueria: out the door.
With its orange-on-orange exterior and wild lettering shouting “tacos” and “tortas” and “barbacoa,” from outside, the place sort of looks like an icehouse on acid. Inside, the walls are red. Very red. It’s the blood red of Saturday morning. And everywhere you look are license plate-looking signs, scolding you in red:
“Please order corn tortillas before stepping up to the counter.”
“We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, no matter who you are or who you think you are or who you know.”
“Prices are subject to change depending on the customer’s attitude.”
“All Sales Final (once you leave the counter).” “We I.D.” This fall, not much will have changed. At 7 a.m., Washington Avenue will be empty but the parking lot will be full, the back of the line reaching out into the cold. The guy in front of me will try and fit half his body inside the warm, built-out patio, and, watching the door shut in front of me, I’ll catch a whiff of steak.
Gently materializing inside will be a heady aroma of jalapenos frying in vegetable oil. Everything will be quietly in full swing. Seated alone at a table beneath a large painting of Mary wreathed with pink carnations will be a woman in an apron eating pasta out of Tupperware, while up on the TV mounted in the corner ESPN analysts will be dissecting the day ahead in college football. Dishes will clatter and receipts’ll rip, while hands behind the counter pluck at towers of empty, baby salsa-to-go containers and stacks of lids. Someone’ll exit, rousing chimes.
That’s when it’ll hit me. There will be tacos: gorgeous, jaw-dropping tacos. In just a few minutes, my teeth will rip through a warm flour tortilla and my whole mouth will instantly fill with smoky beans, moist eggs, and hot, glistening potatoes, all of it drenched in creamy avocado salsa and dripping red — that red salsa with its vivacious and light-hearted heat, sweet hitting your tongue, downright hot thereafter.
By the time I step foot in the dining area — with its steamy counter beneath its neon Laredo sign the color of the rising sun – I’ll have gotten restless.
Now that I think about it, maybe that’s why people are always blocking the waitresses’ path. If you’ve been to Laredo Taqueria, you know what I’m talking about. The wait station sits at the end of the counter, and waitresses — who regularly come flying out of the kitchen balancing steaming bowls of menudo over their heads – are forever getting stopped dead in their tracks by these grown men who can’t help falling under a spell the moment their boots land in someone’s way. I recognize them instantly. They were the boys in middle school who blocked girls’ lockers in hopes of being nuzzled. Whenever their moms served lunch to them and their friends in front of their video games, they didn’t even press “pause.” With my miserable Spanish, how any better? Half the time, the woman behind the counter has to to switch to English when I order because I’m incapable of learning a language half the city speaks.
When the chimes sound this fall and the cold smacks us across the face, it’s a miracle we poor souls set in our ways will have gotten what we wanted. That’s the beauty of Laredo Taqueria.
I can already feel in my hand that warm, surprisingly heavy, brown paper sack.