If you went to yesterday's Cinco de Mayo street fair in New York City's Harlem like Olia, you may have been face-to-face with this massive rotating tower of al pastor, or marinated rotisserie pork. Aside from feasting on tacos al pastor, Olia ate many otherdeliciousMexican foodstuffs that make me feel like a failure for having spent my whole Sunday doing laundry and catching up on work.
Cinco de Mayo is a day of national pride for Mexicans around the world, commemorating Mexico’s victory over French forces in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. We join in the celebration with our favorite Mexican food and drink.
Black Bean Tostadas with Corn Relish: The interplay between hot and cool, the balance of savory warm filling, and the spicy bite of a good salsa—all good things.
Poblano Tacos: These tacos filled with roasted poblanos contain no meat, but still pack lot of flavor.
Cinco de Mayo is a day of national pride for Mexicans around the world, commemorating Mexico’s victory over French forces in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. We join in the celebration with our favorite Mexican food and drink.
Best Tacos in Chicago: when it comes to finding the best regional Mexican dining outside of Mexico, Chicago is the best spot in America.
Chi-Mex: A New Frontier: Mexican Inn turns out to be a very inspired delicious meshing of cultures, a unique Chi-Mex blend, and holds the middle ground between Bayless and Taco Bell quite nicely.
What is it about taco trucks? Does anybody not love them, aside from competing Mexican restaurant owners? Do four-year-olds love taco trucks?
I decided to find out. I took my four-year-old daughter, Iris, to Tacos El Asadero this week, and I think it's fair to say Tacos El Asadero is now her favorite place in the entire world.
El Asadero is Seattle's best-known taco truck—a bus, actually, where you can sit inside and enjoy your taco, mulita, or torta while staring through filmy old bus windows. We stepped inside and ordered several tacos at $1 each. Iris's favorite was the lengua, tender braised beef tongue. She entertained other customers by singing, "Lengua, lengua, lengua," to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Then she stole one of my tortillas and created her own taco with a mix of lengua, carnitas, and carne asada. "I'm eating a real taco!" she declared, dropping meat on the floor of the bus.
Ordering a boring burrito at Charlottesville, Virginia's Aqui Es Mexico would be pretty sad considering that its other mouthwatering burrito offerings include beef tongue, fried pork, and lamb, but it's listed on the children's menu mostly to appease picky young eaters. Adults, don't even think about it.
Citing safety and health concerns, along with cries of "unfair competition" from brick and mortar restaurants in the area, the City of Salinas is considering an outright ban on "mobile vendors" or a severe restriction on their business. In January, the city set a cap on the vendor permits at the current count of 31 and no new permits will be issued causing a gradual fade-out of taco trucks in Salinas. Next week, an as-of-yet unpublicized proposal is scheduled to go before the city council that will further restrict the taco trucks. The proposal could include possible time restrictions instructing taco trucks to only operate between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., could require that the vendors move their trucks every 15 minutes to one hour, or could cause taco trucks to have to move off of public streets and on to private property zoned for the business.
Remember last week's story about Costco selling Mexican Coke? This morning, because we love soda with real sugar—and you, too—an update:
alaina: mexican coke sighting at napa wal-mart lia: link please! lia: or did you see? alaina: no link, i saw it myself! lia: no photo??? alaina: it's a coke bottle alaina: no lia: also i did not think "napa" and "wal-mart" were allowed to be in the same sentence alaina: me neither
(Alaina is in Napa attending Taste3, the annual conference sponsored by Robert Mondavi Winery that "aims to push the exploration and marriage of wine, food and art.")
New York has a well-deserved reputation as a serious eater's paradise as you'd be well-pressed to find somewhere to live in the city that wasn't at most a five minute walk from something delicious. You can find almost everything here you want to eat here—except, strangely enough, good Mexican food, as all my friends transplanted from California, Texas and Mexico moan about endlessly. Time Out New York's Rose Palazzolo says they're all wrong and shares her list of the "tiny taquerias, restaurants and delis throughout the five boroughs" where you can get authentic South of the Border food for not much money.
(The most astonishing thing? There are three entries for Midtown Manhattan, which is generally the city's culinary wasteland. One of them is described as being inside "a dank food court"!)
If you like the Real Thing better made with real sugar and you happen to live near a Costco, you'll be happy to know that they're selling Mexican Coke: $17.99 for a case of 24 twelve ounce bottles, which comes out to 75c each. How'd Costco manage that, you ask? According to SFist, they've "conformed to CA and U.S. rules, such as CRV (the sort-of deposit you pay for the bottle) and "nutrition" labeling, so everything appears to be nice and legal."
Coca-Cola Corporate in Atlanta says there is "no perceptible taste difference" between Mexican Coke made with real sugar and US Coke made with high-fructose corn syrup, but as anyone who's ever had the two can tell you, that's wishful thinking—drinks made with real sugar have a clean sweetness and light mouthfeel to them, while those made with corn syrup have heavy mouthfeel and a cloying sweetness.
Who can imagine New York City without the Mission burrito? Like the Yankees, the Brooklyn Bridge or the bagel, the oversize burritos have become a New York institution. And yet it wasn’t long ago that it was impossible to find a good burrito of any kind in the city. As the 30th anniversary of the Alameda-Weehawken burrito tunnel approaches, it’s worth taking a look at the remarkable sequence of events that takes place between the time we click “deliver” on the burrito.nyc.us.gov website and the moment that our hot El Farolito burrito arrives in the lunchroom with its satisfying pneumatic hiss.
The director Robert Rodriguez has a new movie out, Grindhouse, which I haven't gotten around to seeing yet, but I did love 2005's Sin City, his adaptation of the Frank Miller comic book. Turns out if you get the Sin City DVD, one of the special features on it is the second episode of Rodriguez's 10-Minute Cooking School, for his Sin City Breakfast Tacos:
He makes his tortillas from scratch, and uses both lard and butter! I may have to fight his new girlfriend Rose McGowan for him.
The Houston Press' Robb Walsh recently visited local taquería Mexico's Deli, where all the sandwiches have jailhouse-themed names like the "fugitiva," the "convicta" and the "tortura":
In the 1970s, [owner] Alex [Garcia] explained, he opened his first taquería in Mexico City. Spoofing the hit musical La Cage aux Folles (The Bird Cage), he called the restaurant La Jaula de Tacos (the taco cage). In keeping with the "cage" theme, the tortas were named after prisons. The incarceration tortas were a big hit, and Alex went on to open four more restaurants in Mexico City. But his mini-chain collapsed with the devaluation of the peso during the Carlos Salinas de Gortari regime. So Alex came to Houston to start over.
On my third visit, I tried a Mexico City specialty called a pambazo, which is a torta made on bread that's been dipped in a chile sauce. Mexico City's pambazo is stuffed with potatoes, chorizo, sour cream and cheese. I ate the incredibly messy sandwich with a knife and fork. Alex told me that in Mexico City, people eat pambazos with their hands, but only outdoors, usually at the bullfights. It's sort of the equivalent of a Texas chili dog, but with the chili on the outside of the bun.
I'm not much for bullfights but I would really like a pambazo for an afternoon snack, right about now.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 26, 2007 at 5:24 PM
Raul Gutierrez has an amazing photoblog (one of my all-time favorites, as a matter of fact) but the reason I'm linking to him today is his text blog post on how to buy good tortillas: "Good tortillas have 3 ingredients: corn, lime, water. That's it. If anything else is listed in the ingredients you your tortillas are no good. If your supermarket doesn't have tortillas with these ingredients (and these ingredients only), go somewhere else." And yes, he gives you good advice on where that somewhere else should be.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 1, 2007 at 4:59 PM
Korean-Mexican Fusion: Kalbi Tacos? eat drink & be merry lives in ethnically diverse LA and ruminates on the fusion of cultures by... making tacos with korean bbq ribs instead of carne asada. YES.
(Also: someone please get the Pushcart NYC guy to start making these for me? Kalbi rolls are great but now that my mind has been awakened to the possibility of kalbi tacos, it will not rest.)
