San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Birria in tacos, ramen — even pizza
Truck helps drive the craze
El Remedio caught the birria de res taco wave as it began to rise in 2017, building up to last summer when the trend crested nationwide and the trailer found its permanent home at a former used car lot on Culebra Road on the city’s West Side.
Judging from the long line on a recent weekday, El Remedio is still riding high on that wave, even if “worth a drive” might be more accurately described as “worth the wait.” El Remedio is both.
“Birria’s been around for a long time,” said Josh Palacios, who owns El Remedio with his wife, Martha Palacios. “We jumped on it a long time before the trend happened.”
Until recently, El Remedio operated as a pair of trailers selling both birria and mariscos, the Mexican seafood known for its shrimp cocktail and Mexican coastal ceviches marinated in lime. As demand for birria grew, the Palacios family scaled back on mariscos, rededicating the trailer they once reserved for seafood to become a prep-and-production facility for the birria trailer.
For the time being, ceviche is the only holdover from the mariscos menu, something the Palacios family intends to fix soon when they add another trailer dedicated to mariscos and sushi at the Culebra Road site. They’ve already added to the El Remedio family, opening a birria trailer late last year at the growing El Camino food truck park near the River Walk just north of downtown.
Another birria truck is in the works as well. But the even bigger news is that El Remedio is planning a brick-and-mortar location in February or March in Stone Oak that will seat close to 300 people and serve birria, mariscos, sushi and craft cocktails.
Best dish: At El Remedio,
birria de res is made by boiling beef top round steak for four hours with a seasoning blend that Josh Palacios won’t divulge, then taking the broth and cooking that separately for another hour with tomatoes and more secret spices to make a dipping sauce called consommé.
The result is beef that’s tender without going mealy, its long, willowy fibers holding on to broth and spices that growl like chili but come back to a happier place with high aromatics like the red side of the spice cabinet.
The strongest expression of that birria was an order of four quesatacos ($12), with the birria folded into corn tortillas dredged in tangy housemade adobo,
then grilled on the flat-top with mozzarella cheese. The half-moon tacos are crispy at the edges, melty and soft on the inside, and the adobo’s sweetness balances the high, dry heat of the birria. They’re served with a cup of that consommé — beef ’s answer to the whole chicken-soup-for-the-soul thing. Dunk away.
Other dishes: Birria is like shrimp in “Forrest Gump,” with variations for a wide array of tastes. Start with the keto-friendly version of the birria tacos ($12 for four), with a toasted cheese crust standing in for the tortilla. It’ll never be the same as a tortilla, but if low carb is your thing, you could do worse.
Birria pizza ($18) might seem like a step too far, like that “Saturday Night Live” Taco Town skit where it’s, “Pizza! Now that’s what I call a taco!” Relax. At El Remedio, “pizza” was more like two open-faced quesadillas stacked on top of each other, built on toasted 12-inch flour tortillas with birria, mozzarella, onions and cilantro, cut like a pizza for folding and plunging into the consommé served on the side. It came in a pizza box that felt as heavy as a baby. A birria baby.
Less novel but just as good was a birria torta
($10) packed with beef, cheese, salsa, cilantro and onions into a soft telera roll as big as a catcher’s mitt. For birria ramen ($10), El Remedio took a packaged bowl of Tapatio dry ramen from the grocery shelf and brought the noodles to life with consommé, then added a generous amount of birria with onions and cilantro. Campbell’s, are you listening?