Tortilla-wrapped delight exists to be doctored to one’s idea of taco heaven
Dallas-based writer José R. Ralat’s new book, “American Tacos,” considers the evolution and taxonomy of the tortilla-wrapped street food that has become a culinary totem all across the country, and an obsession here in Texas.
Cynics might call our taco mania a fetish at this point, but I find it impossible to be cynical about tacos. They are simply too central to my way of life.
It was not always thus. Back in 1966, when I met my first taco at a Jack in the Box drive-thru during my freshman year at Rice University, Houston tacos were generally of the classic Tex-Mex school: crunchy fried shell, crumbled ground beef filling, garnish of chopped iceberg, tomato and grated yellow cheese. Spoon on a little red salsa (or
squirt it out of a packet), and that was it.
It took me a while to learn to love these tacos. There were plenty of bad ones, with dreary commercial shells or poorly seasoned picadillo or one-note salsa. But properly done, I came to understand, the Tex-Mex taco could delight.
The version at the Spanish Village on Almeda always made me happy when it arrived on my combo plate. And a light bulb went off in my head when I first tasted the taco at the old Last Concert Cafe in the late 1960s, when you still had to knock on the door to get in, and owner Elena “Mama” Lopez still presided from her corner booth near the entrance.
Her taco wore a stealth ribbon of vinaigrette (it tasted a lot like bottled Italian dressing) on top of its lettuce and tomatoes, and it was a touch that galvanized the flavors, made them come alive. Right then I grasped a truism that lies at the heart of the taco’s appeal: It exists not just to be savored as is but also to be tweaked and doctored into one’s own idea of taco heaven.
It might be hard to believe, but it wasn’t until the early 1970s that gringo Houston snapped to the soft, interior Mexican-style taco — elemental and ancient with its pre-Hispanic roots — that now rules the city’s taco scene.
Sure, the soft corn-tortilla taco existed in home kitchens or scattered barrio spots. But not until the original 24-hour Las Cazuelas started drawing a wide, mostly young audience to the corner of Fulton and Quitman on the near northside, where they lined up late into the night after drinking and concertgoing and dancing, did the broader civic ideas about tacos began to shift.
Ninfa Laurenzo propelled that change in 1973 at the original Ninfa’s on Navigation, where the dish that drew flocks of eager customers from across the city was Tacos a la Ninfa: mesquitegrilled skirt steak tucked into Norteño-style flour tortillas made on the spot, to be gigged with red or green salsa, maybe some pico de gallo.
That specialty, tacos al carbón, helped to launch the whole fajita craze, complete with sizzling iron platters, loops of caramelized onion and a colorful circus of garnishes — the do-it-yourself soft skirt steak taco still rules Texas today.
By 1986, when Texas Monthly sent me out to eat tacos all over the state for an epic “Taco Tour” cover story, the Norteño flourtortilla style was so popular — especially in newly fashionable breakfast tacos — that I worried our collective appreciation for corn tortillas was on the wane, along with our ablility to make superior ones. Would Texans lose their memory of what a wellmade corn tortilla was supposed to taste like? I asked. (Spoiler: We didn’t.)
Back then I couldn’t have imagined the sea change that lay ahead, and which Ralat documents in “American Tacos.” And I certainly couldn’t imagine that Ralat’s current job as Texas Monthly’s taco editor would exist at the magazine for which I then worked. I was smart enough to single out San Antonio as the state’s mid-’80s taco capital, and to spotlight Brownsville as the shining light of the Rio Grande Valley’s taco scene, but mostly I just tried to make a case that the taco deserved to be considered as more than “an afterthought on the great Tex-Mex menu of life.”
Even some of the categories into which Ralat divides American tacos might have boggled my mind back then: genre-blending K-Mex (Korean-influenced) tacos, Jewish and kosher tacos, Sur-Mex tacos informed by the ingredients and culinary traditions of the Deep South, Alta-California tacos. When I came across a barbecued brisket taco in my travels across Texas, I actually joked about it.
In San Antonio, I wrote approvingly, that as a filling “almost anything goes, including Polish sausage, chilaquiles, driedshrimp cakes, or — would I pull your leg about something like this? — chopped-beef barbecue.”
Now, in the fullness of time, barbecue tacos coexist with barbacoa tacos (which were strong in 1986 Valley taco styles) as an exciting new Texas foodway — often with a Tex-Mex twist — from Valentina’s in Austin to 2M Smokehouse in San Antonio to Eddie O’s BBQ in Houston. My colleague Chris Reid, the Chronicle’s barbecue columnist, has documented the barbecue taco phenomenon at Palomo Pit BBQ, JQ’s Tex-Mex BBQ and Tejas Chocolate & BBQ in the Houston area, just to name a few.
If I ever get out of self-quarantine, a lot of these places are on my wish list.
As for the chef-driven tacos of which Ralat writes, who other than Houston’s Hugo Ortega has done more to establish ancient ways of corn-tortilla making in concert with beautfully modulated taco fillings — whether it be beef cheeks (cachetes), crispskinned suckling pig or grilled octopus, all to be baptized with one of a dozen brilliant salsas?
And when it comes to modern forms, where better to appreciate the latest Mexico City twists than La Vibra Tacos, the sleek semiserve spot that deals in filigreed griddled-cheese wraps (costras) and the kind of salsa constellation that makes doctoring a joy?
It’s funny because in 1986, I pegged Houston’s taco appeal as just “a tad” better than Dallas’. That was not, at the time, a compliment.
Just for the record, the Houston taco spots I name-checked were Ninfa’s; Mérida; Doneraki; the “nuevo-wavo” Goode Co. Hamburgers & Taquería; Cortes Meat Market & Deli; La Mexicana Supermarket & Deli; Taquería Tepatitlán; Taquería del Sol; and Taquería Mexico.
Now, 34 years later, I could make a case for this city as Texas’ taco capital just as strong as the one I once made for San Antonio. From flea-market stalls to fine dining, we’ve got it all.
Mr. Ralat — who’s a great tacodining companion, by the way — might not agree. But then, that’s the fun of reading his book and reflecting on the taco evolution that still rolls on, here and all across America.