TACO TOUR YIELDS BEAUTS AND BORES
I’ve taken a taco tour of Ottawa in recent weeks, grazing at some of the newer places that focus on that sometimes more, sometimes less, Mexican treat. Below, in lieu of full-sized reviews, are my findings following some single-visit spot checks.
Silvia and Marco Martinez came to Canada in 2013 from Acapulco and about a month ago the couple opened Casa México in a Merivale Road strip mall just south of Baseline Road, replacing their sandwich shop that was called Passport Café. The rebranded business is humble, with its cooking area in plain view beside the cash. But the eatery is colourfully and festively decorated, and service here, especially if you can speak a smidgen of Spanish, was warm and personal.
A half-dozen tacos were available on corn tortillas sturdy enough to contain their slowcooked, shredded proteins. Tacos here were rightsized, neither too small nor overloaded, and minimally garnished. Most flavourful were the tacos filled with pork adobo, chicken mole and Mexican chorizo with potatoes. Shredded beef and pork tacos benefited from the boost of green salsa brought to the table. The shredded pork (carnitas) tacos would have been better with a finishing sear to make the meat crispy.
Still, these were basic but good tacos worth a visit (especially at $4 apiece), and the fine, flavourful tortilla soup ($8), house-made and not-too-sweet tamarindo drinks ($3.50) and Latin music added to my positive impression of this no-frills but charming place.
I’ve also tried the tacos at the similarly named, and formerly associated, Ola Cocina in Vanier and La Cocina Loca (previously Ola Cocina West) in Hintonburg.
There’s a longer story to be told, but the shorter one begins with restaurateur Donna Chevrier opening her cosy 20-seater Ola Cocina in late 2013, and later joining forces with Ottawa serial restaurateur Ion Aimers to bring her acclaimed artisanal tacos to Hintonburg, in the space that had previously been one of Aimers’ ZaZaZa pizza joints.
The partnership ended, but Aimers continues to sell Ola Cocina-style tacos in the renamed La Cocina Loca. While the menus are nearly identical at the two eateries, my respective taco dinners varied considerably.
Yes, both Cocinas serve a wide range of fancy tacos ($4 at La Cocina Loca, $4.50 at Ola Cocina), including duck confit tacos outfitted with arugula, beets, crème fraîche and cranberry coffee maple syrup, as well as tandoori chicken and pork belly tacos, plus more traditional creations such as pork shoulder slow roasted in achiote paste. But everything tasted significantly better — fresher out of the kitchen and more zippily garnished — at Ola Cocina in Vanier.
The same went for guacamole at both places, and especially for side orders of rice and beans. In Vanier, the rice and beans were punchily seasoned. In Hintonburg, not only were the sides bland, but the beans also came with pieces of plastic wrap among them. (Thankfully, the server apologized and my meal was comped.)
Our conclusion, factoring in a taco tour that I’d taken in 2015, was that, made well, Chevrier’s tacos were among the top three in the city. But beyond her watchful eye, they can also be distinctly less well executed.
What other tacos do I crave? In addition to those from Ola Cocina and Taqueria Kukulkan on Montreal Road, which I raved about two years ago, there are the tacos at the recently opened El Camino on Clarence Street.
A bigger spinoff of El Camino on Elgin Street, this new ByWard Market restaurant and bar has all the hipness — and some would say hype — you would expect from a place opened by chefs Matt Carmichael and Jordan Holley, whose downtown Ottawa mini-empire includes the original El Camino, its Asian smallplates neighbour Datsun and the upscale Sparks Street gem Riviera.
El Camino’s are the priciest tacos in town; most are $6.50 each but a hard-shell tuna tartare taco is $10.50. That said, the ones we tried were memorable beauts worth the splurge. At the ByWard Market location, where most of the seating is at high-top tables, we were won over by outré choices, such as a cochinita roasted pig-head taco (great flavour and texture, excellent sear) and ox tongue (funky note to the flavour, nice char). More conventional choices, including a chicken tinga and a massively proportioned, crispy fish taco were also delights. All demonstrated the kitchen’s skill at balancing bold flavours with nuanced accents to create distinctive, crave-worthy tacos.
El Camino’s non-taco offerings tempted too, but we limited our sampling to the primal pleasures of the Mexican corn (two cobs for $13), torched and slathered with spice and mild, shredded feta; the salt and pepper squid ($12), which was tender and not oily, but could have been seasoned more assertively; and the small but satisfying, gone-in-a-flash “tequilime pie” ($7).
Finally, basically around the corner from El Camino, is Zak’s Cantina on ByWard Market Square, the neighbouring sister restaurant of the veteran eatery Zak’s Diner. According to its website, the cantina means to recreate “every classic detail of a genuine Mexican family restaurant,” although the classic ’80s rock sounds during our lunch arguably undercut that goal. Along one side of the dining room, the exterior of a South American-inspired bus adds colour and fun.
Of four tacos ($4.50) here — spicy beef, pulled pork, chicken, deep-fried haddock — the fish was best. The rest, while large and filling, were sloppily made and sloppy to eat, with meat that wasn’t hot and was either underseasoned or over-seasoned. At $6.50, so-called “crazy corn” here was half the price of El Camino’s. But its corn on the cob, sitting plainly in a bowl with feta, wasn’t half as good.
Zak’s Cantina is family-friendly, and its patio appealed during the waning days of summer. But its tacos were among the least of its selling points.