The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
El Taco Macho in Painesville a hidden gem worth trying
The al pastor meat at Painesville eatery is a real find
I don’t remember exactly when I first saw the sign for El Taco Macho. It seems like forever ago when it first popped up at the Crystal Plaza in Painesville. It was up long before the place was open, teasing passersby with the promise of authentic Mexican street food.
It finally opened in December, and I finally made it in there for the first time on a recent Sunday. I guess I’m still trying to figure out why, after months of agonizing anticipation, I waited so long. Life gets in the way of authentic Mexican food sometimes, although we shouldn’t let it.
When it comes to Mexican food, the word “authentic” gets tossed around a lot. In Painesville, if you know where to go, you can get Mexican food that qualifies. Mostly, however, here in Northeast Ohio, we get the Americanized versions of Mexican food. And Mexican street food is almost an entirely different story.
It’s exactly as it sounds — food sold on the streets by vendors in markets. To put it in some sort of perspective, it might be like comparing your favorite meal made by grandma to, say, your favorite food-truck grub. Both can be authentic, but they are quite different.
So El Taco Macho might be a bit of a different place from what you’d expect from a Mexican restaurant. It sits between Marc’s and a Dollar General in an unassuming shopping-center location, but inside is a modern, industrial motif. It’s got a super-high, blackedout ceiling with exposed metal trusses and ductwork. Booths are fashioned from iron pipe. Earth-toned ceramic tiles comprise the floor and some of the walls, and hammered-metal pendant lights hang over the tables. There are quite a few mannequin heads adorned with the Lucha libre wrestling masks that seem to be a big part of modern Mexican pop culture. There’s no generic mariachi music playing on a loop.
The menu is smallish and straightforward — if you’re looking for the standard list of 40 combination dinners or chimichangas, etc., you’re probably in the wrong place. There are tacos — the first true Mexican street food to assimilate in the United States — quesadillas, burritos, tortas (sandwiches) and three masa dishes. Masa is a dough base that’s slightly risen — think pita as opposed to tortilla. For most of it, you pick your meat, and each individual dish comes with its own complementary ingredients.
We started with a couple of choices from the appetizer menu: guacamole ($4.99) and street corn ($4.50), just because we always have to try the guac and I am a big fan of Mexican street corn. The guacamole was a rather large portion, served in a romaine leaf and surrounded by four large wheat chips. If I were forced to letter-grade it, I’d call it a B-plus — above average but not in the top 10 percentile. It was very fresh and had a bit more lime juice and black pepper than one might expect.
The street corn, meanwhile, had more of a kick than you might anticipate. It’s grilled corn on the cob, topped with butter, mayonnaise, paprika and cotija cheese. It was wonderful — and they either use a spicy mayo without describing it as such on the menu, or a paprika with some heat that I have yet to discover for home use.
My wife went with tacos for her entrée, electing the queso tacos. The tacos come in pairs, this one with chihuahua cheese, steak and avocado, wrapped in one soft and one hard tortilla ($5.99). All of the tortillas at El Macho Taco are handmade, and she commented how fresh it all seemed. I didn’t try a bite, but she was happy with her choice.
But not as happy as I was with mine.
One of the meat options at El Taco Macho is al pastor, which loosely translated means “from the shepherd.” It’s derived from the MiddleEastern shawarma style of spit-roasting lamb; only in central Mexico, it’s pork. It’s generally seasoned with chili, onion and pineapple, the latter of which typically drips down from atop a massive chunk of pork that’s roasting vertically. Thin slices are carved off while it’s roasting. It’s not something you can get everywhere, so I jumped at it.
I got it in a mojado burrito, a 10-inch tortilla wrapped around the pork, rice and beans and topped with a cheese crema ($9.99). The meat was the highlight of the entire meal, a deep, savory flavor with a just a hint of sweetness and a mix of tenderness and crispness, the pork’s fat singed to a perfect bark. It’s maybe the best meat I’ve ever tasted at a Mexican restaurant, certainly the best I’ve had in the state of Ohio. It’s almost unbelievable that something this sublime can be found this close to home.
What’s a bit strange is, for as many people who talk to me about food — including a few who had been to El Taco Macho before me — I had heard nothing of this glorious meat. I kind of feel as though I’ve discovered culinary gold in my own backyard. It’s that good.
I ate only half of my large burrito, in an attempt to save room for dessert. My wife and I split an order of churros ($4.99), which, perhaps, was the only dish that might not qualify for the aforementioned “authentic” descriptor. I haven’t had churros in Mexico City, the home of street food, but somehow I doubt they’re topped with chocolate and sprinkles there. Maybe they are. They were good nonetheless.
El Taco Macho also has some little details going for it. There are seven Mexican beers on tap, served from a little bar in the back, separate from the main dining area. The chips and salsa that arrive as soon as you sit down, just like every typical Mexican joint, come with a very good salsa but also with a small dish of pickled vegetables that are a nice little touch. There are also signature Mexican cocktails you can’t get just anywhere.
My complaints are mostly insignificant. The seats at the booth we sat in are situated curiously far away from the table — there’s a kids’ menu, but if my kids ate there, they’d be really far away from the table. The service was good overall, but dinner comes at a more leisurely pace than most other Mexican restaurants in the area.
All in all, El Taco Macho was worth the wait. Heck, the al pastor alone was.
Reviews are based on one anonymous visit to the restaurant.