Best Taco

We are looking for the best taco in the land. If you have a favorite place to buy your favorite taco, send us your email and we will publish your letter.

After the Tacos, the True Flavors of Mexico article argued with a straight face earlier this week that some of the best tacos to be had can be found in a Mexican grocery store in Astoria, Queens, taco experts felt the need to weigh in. Not surprisingly, West Coasters and former West Coasters were particularly eager to dispel New York's claim to righteous tacos.

Del Ruiz, Lathrop, California: For good tacos visit Don Luis' in Lathrop, CA. Whenever I am in the Stockton area I go to Don Luis' for their menudo, but their tacos are especially good.

Rodolfo Madero, Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico: Just try Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico TACOS... those are tacos.

Albuquerque

Tina Cordova, Albuquerque, New Mexico: The absolute best Tacos in the world can be found at La Fonda del Bosque restaurant, in the Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico. The owner Margy Hernandez is a magnificant cook and the only place where I have had Tacos this good was in the kitchen of my mother and grandmothers. The corn tortilla made in the factory of her husband Tony Hernandez is grilled slightly crunchy and the meat has the perfect blend of spices. When you add the cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and finally their wonderful homemade salsa it's topped off perfectly. I love these tacos. Everyone loves these tacos! La Fonda del Bosque, 1701 4th St. SW, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87102, 505.247.9480

Rodolfo Peña, Monterrey, Mexico: "I know New Yorkers love to claim 'first' in everything, but grocery store tacos are not something invented there. As far back as 1964, when I went to High School in East Los Angeles' infamous Lincon High, we would sneak out at lunch to eat tacos and burritos at the grocery store owned by a fellow Mexican. Recently, I lived in Silicon Valley, where places like 'Los Torres' in Sunnyvale, and 'Mi Pueblo' in Mountain View, have sold tacos, burritos, and quesadillas in the back of the store for years. Do your homework, folks."

Alfredo Chavez, 321 Jean Drive, Pharr Texas: Hello everybody. Visit my mother at 321 Jean Drive, Pharr, Texas, and you will taste the best taco anywhere. Ask for Maria Chavez.

The most important aspect of a good taco is the freshness, temperature, and thickness of the corn tortilla. Most NYC tacos seem to be prepared with in-the-bag tortillas made somewhere in Brooklyn, and are often room tempertaure and waterlogged from the steam of the bag that squishes them together for hours on end. I have yet to find a place that prepares tacos with tortillas made on-site moments before the taco is in your hand. The ideal tortilla is of the corn variety, fairly firm, and freshly made. Tacos eaten on the streets of Mexico are usually made with smaller tortillas, about half the size of the ones we gringos are used to.

There are other characteristics for an authentic taco as well. For example, a real Mexican taco doesn't contain lettuce or chopped tomatoes. Real tacos are usually garnished with finely chopped cilantro and onions. There are various meats that can be used inside a taco, ground beef is not one of them. (Suradero, or stringy, fatty roast beef, is my favorite.) A real Mexican taco is prepared by laying down a layer of Mexican rice on the [fresh] tortilla, a spoonful of beans, the meat of choice, and the cilantro and onions. It is eaten with red or green salsa (green, made from tomatillos, is my favorite) and a wedge of lime juice. The salsa is not the chunky "a la Mexicana" style, but the spicy, pureed kind. For the final touch of authenticity, one may also enjoy these treats with sliced radishes and small roasted whole sweet onions that have been cooking in the juices of the meats.

I have yet to find The Authentic Taco in NYC, or even ones that are considered great by any standard (BTW: I do not eat in many fancy NY spots, so spare me references to trendy eateries that make a $14 taco, OK? That's not a taco either! By definition, a taco is a very "base" food item and should be treated as such.)

The closest things are found in the Brookyln-based "Productos Mexicanos" grocery store chain, and a mobile food stand on 96th and Broadway.

I have never heard of an authentic taco with rice and beans on it. Just like they don't make burritos in mexico, maybe that is a gringo invention. i will definitely agree with you on the importance of a radish. but don't forget a good pickled carrot slice, too. also, i find tacos often are made with two tortillas, then the meat, onions, cilantro, lime on the side, and sometimes even the salsa on the side.

Oh, I almost forgot: no grated cheese. The crumbled queso fresco on other dishes isn't usually on tacos, either. A taco with grrated cheese is often referred to as a "gringo." As for baja (fish) tacos, that is deep fried fish with shredded cabbage and soume white sauce, sometimes that is a little pico as well as cooling.

My friend who grew up in Baja California and I ate at the taco place on Ave A that was mentioned in the article last night, and had a good time. But he says that the best tacos he has ever had in the United States are from the place that we would go to when I was living in Staten Island. It is called Taco Azteca, on Victory Boulevard not too far from the ferry terminal. Everything that goes into the tacos is homemade (except probably the tortillas, unfortunately). They are very inexpensive, and even someone like me who grew up in southern Minnesota can tell they are very good. From the ferry terminal, you can take the S46, S48, S62, S66 busses, or any other bus that goes up Victory. Or you can just turn left outside the ferry terminal and walk along Bay Street until you get to Victory, turn right and walk up the hill two or three more blocks. If you get to the place where Corson Avenue splits off, you've gone too far. It's about a 10-15 minute walk.

A real Mexican taco, in fact genuine Mexican food of any variety, *always* uses white onion, unless you're in the Yucatan, where you do often run into red onions, usually pickled or in a light habanero salsa. Yellow onions are too sweet for Mexican food. The same goes for oregano, incidentally. Never use "greek" or "mediterranean" oregano on Mexican food. Mexican oregano is more peppery and pungent, less sweet. You can usually find it in grocery stores that sell Mexican or Hispanic foods.

Lime juice is definitely kosher, as is salsa, usually. The salsa is usually tailored to the specific taco. Some get green, others get one of an endless variety of reds. These are always drizzled on the top.

No. There are never any rice and beans on a Mexican taco. That is a ridiculous sacrilege, and if you people in New York are being fed tacos like that, you ought to go on taco strike. I suppose taquerias in "unsophisticated" markets do that because they assume, probably correctly, that American palates prefer quantity over quality.

The correct format for most tacos is, two small lightly grilled corn tortillas piled with whatever meat (chicken, steak, barbecued pork or carnitas, tongue, brain, etc.), chopped raw onion, cilantro and whatever sauce. Lime wedges come on the side. There are two schools of taco eating. You can either eat it as one single taco, reinforcing the whole pile with the extra tortilla to keep it from making an unfortunate mess of your blouse, or, you can divide the meat filling between the two tortillas and eat two mini-tacos. Some of the best tacos include: Carnitas (braised and fried pieces of pork shoulder marinated in fruit, usually orange); al pastor (pork cooked on a vertical spit, shawerma style, slow-basted with pineapple and onion); cochinita pibil (a very traditional — and rare in the U.S. — form of pork covered in an annato-oregano-cumin paste and roasted wrapped in banana leaves); tongue, etc...

Correctly understood, the taco is not really a meal, but a snack. Although three of the sublimely greasier varieties will sate all but the most prodigious appetites. If you're really hungry and don't want that kind of heart bomb, I personally feel that there is nothing wrong with a burrito, at least as long as it's a really good burrito. Contrary to a belief popular popular among would-be-purists, they apparently *were* actually invented in a small town in Northern Mexico, but were not originally widely consumed outside of the particular Northern region from which the familiar-to-Gringos flour tortilla hails. In its fully evolved Californian iteration, the burrito is a true work of populist culinary art, at least as much as the Philly cheese steak (and certainly more sophisticated in the architecture of its flavors), and Mexican-Americans and Mexicans who find themselves North of the border do in fact consume great numbers of them with gusto.

There are definitely variations. Your typical tacos stands in Mexico have a bowl of black beans and rice. You're right: the beans are not added, but are in a bowl next to the salsas and limes, for people to add as filler. This is not a burrito, which as we both know as a large tortilla (often flour) wrapped in a gringo fashion with lettuce, tomatos, sour cream, etc. (Burritos are actually quite common in northern Mexico, but are deep fried, made with refried red beans, and disappear quickly as you head south.) And, yes, your Mexican Taco uses two smaller tortillas instead of one. The nifty thing about that is you can spread them out a little bit as you eat them when stuff starts to flow over the sides. it's about the same amount of corn flour, but you have less mangeablility with just one larger tortilla.

There are some variations to the theme of an authentic Mexican taco. But most are very juicy. For example, taco guisados might be your most common, made with stews or greasy meats (and I mean greasy in a good way). That would be a street stall with a bowl of black beans (to add yourself). But unless you ask, they would include a small layer of mexican rice between the tortilla and meat (to soak up the juices and grease). And yes: I forgot to mention the pickled jalepenos and carrot slices!

Tacos al pastor, made from pork roasted on a spit (best when the pork is cooked to a crisp) would not have beans and rice. I saw some guys in Mexico City preparing one of these cylinders of pork. It's amazing. They take sliced pieces of raw pork and lay them in a cylinder — usually a bucket with the bottom cut out, though in my case I saw a 50-gallon drum and the result was enormous. They put chile serrano between the layers (hence the reddish-pink tint of the raw meat). The drum has a pike in the middle of it. When the drum is full, they turn it over onto a poart of the spit and pull the drum away, leaving a cylinder of raw pork to rotate in front of a flame.

Tacos al pastor are the simplest taco: tortillas, pork, and finely diced onions/cilantro thrown on top. They always have a red and green salsa, and in my experience. I think the red salsa is made from chile serrano and/or chipotle and the green alwasys from tomatillos.

The lime provided in a bowl and people usually squeeze the juice over the taco after adding the optional black beans (optinal for tacos guisados). The grilled onions would be those small ones with the long green leaves. The leaves are used as a handle to flip the onions on dome-shaped griddle that's surrounded by a moat of grease and meat. The dome-shaped griddle is a great invention, the meats cook slowly in the surrounding moat, and the dome is extra hot (basically a reverse wok) for quick grilling. The onions are cooked they are fairly blackened all the way around — very delicious). You typically have to ask for the grilled onions (handed to you whole or chopped in half), but they don't charge extra.

I have to say that when I lived in Mexico City, the best taco I ever had, at a stall that is still there and has expanded greatly in my visits back was made from an omlette.

There's a taco called a "taco de torta" (not to be confused with "torta" which is a Mexican-style sandwich). Tortas (and "tortilla" for that matter) is a Spanish way of saying "round and flat," and comes from Spain. In Spain, a torta is a Spanish omlette. In Mexico, a "taco de torta" is a tacos prepared as above, but instead of meat, they place a silver-dollar sized omlette on the small bed of rice. The tortas you see on the street are almost always with strands of pork. But this one stand had tortas de espinaca: spinach omlette tacos, and they costs the equivalent of 15 cents apiece. When you topped it with the black beans and salsa, and crunched on the radish for the extra bite, they were sabrosa.

"Authentic" depends on where you are. I'd guess that every 40 miles or so, there's a change in what's authentic and what's sacrilege.

I prefer tacos al carbon, grilled beef with grilled green onions and cilantro on corn tortillas; salsa optional. Delicious and not as drippy.

A chicken chipotle queso loco (San Loco (mulitiple locations throughout)) to absorb all the beer!

I agree this article was unintentionally humorous, but it's about time NYC discovered Mexican food. Still I don't know where anyone can find big giant burritos al West Coast style, or the incredible Mexican seafood in the city. Other articles touching on similar threads are a Times article from earlier this year about how chefs were discovering their Hispanic line cooks' meals were so good, even when cobbled together from random kitchen ingredients. Also see Calvin Trillin's New Yorker article from earlier this year about burrito love in San Francisco.

I'll believe it's real in NYC when there are taco trucks: Some taco truck love we have in Oakland, CA.

You might as well start talking about the best pizza slice. It's a moot point. I moved to California in 1977 and had never had anything like real Mexican food before that. Here in California there are Mexican restaurants everywhere you go, and more all the time. They also span a broad range from simple, greasy and not very good to an abundance of mid-range (ingredients, price, decor) restaurants with lots of tasty food, to chic, upscale places with surreal Aztlan/Mayan decor, exotic tequilas and 'gourmet' recipes. Lots of places offer menus with a crushing sameness but in recent years some restaurants have smartened and modified their approach by emphasizing fresh ingredients, less lard, and incorporating more kinds of salsas, more fruit and vegetables, and more varied seasonings from Mexico and Guatemala. The bottom line is that the best tacos, burritos, quesadillas, or chimichangas don't hit your stomach like a ton of bricks. If you come to California try Uruapan in Petaluma; Cafe Marimba on Chestnut Street in San Francisco, or Taqueria Vallarta in Santa Cruz (to name three out of THOUSANDS of Mexican restaurants) for a variety of flavorful experiences.

I think I now know more about tacos than I will ever be able to digest, so to speak. But now, just two more questions:

1. Is the only difference between the dry "masa" you can buy in a bag at the store and "corn flour" nutritional, due to the use of lime? Can you use corn flour instead of masa in a recipe?

2. I bought some dried chiles in a cellophane bag and when I examined them closely it really looked like something was growing on two or three of them, maybe mold. I soaked them anyway but lost my nerve and didn't use them; I could still see it and it looked worse when it got wet. Is that typical and/or harmless?

Over the last ten years I've heard more and more Spanish spoken all along the Eastern Seaboard; Poblanos working on Cape Cod, Oaxacans pumping gas in Queens, norteños singing corridos on the subway in Manhattan, Veracruzanos running stylish marisquerías in Boston, Tarascos working at upscale resorts in New Hampshire. So it is no surprise that good Mexican antojitos would quickly follow.

Any suggestion that New York or Los Angeles has a monopoly on wonderful Mexican food is silly. We are, and continue to be, a land of immigrants. As a fifth generation Californian I am grateful for the infussion of southern Mexican cuisuine into our country.

Over the last same ten years the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California has enjoyed a renaissance of a wide-spectrum of Asian restaurants, from Cambodian to Vietnamese. Qué viva la diferencia!

I'm not sure what you mean by masa and corn flour nutritional. I know that something called nixtamal is the dough you can buy in the street in Mexico (which is in the form of dough) is the stuff with the lime in it. I didn't realize you could buy this in the USA as it is becoming increasingly difficult to find in Mexico, thanks to the growing propularity of pre-packaged tortillas. Interestingly enough, you can buy fresh flour tortillas in Mexico nowadays, and the nixtamal vendors are becoming less frequent. One can still easily go to a fresh tortilleria and buy what you need for that day (made from corn flour without lime), much the same way you might go to a bakerey in NYC every day for fresh bread. I find toritllas generally unpallatable the following day much the same way bagels just aren't the after you buy them a few hours out of the water.

I would love to see authentic tacos of all varieties in the USA. I think Mexican food in general in the USA refers to California-Mexican or Tex-Mex. Traditional al pastor and rotisserie chicken taco are virtually non-existent in the USA. I find a lot of the gringo-ized Mexican to be very good although much blander. Like a lot of things perceived to be "Mexican" in the USA (including NYC), what we're talking about is a hybird with Anglo tastes in mind (AKA, bland). At least that's my armchair theory on Mexican food in the USA.

I find owners of Mexican restaurants tend to modify their food to appeal to what Northamericans like, not what they themselves like, which explains why so many places lay a bowl of chips and salsa the second you walk in the door (tortilla chips, or totopes as they are known in Mexico, are only found there in places that cater to foreign tourists). And I find many Mexican think Northamericans don't like their food spicy, so even "spicy" dishes are tempered down.

One other detail: My friend Emilio from Guerrero, Mexico who owns a popular Mexican restaurant down south (in the USA) had helped to give me these ideas of what a Mexican restaurant is about. He serves the "California-style" fat burritos to much success. Americans love that kind of bland, quasi-Mexican food. And he does this because that's what these folks want.

Anyway, to the person who said NYC needs to develop a taste for Mexican Authentic. I'm all for that. I think somebody ought to try to capture "Mexican street food" in its essense, not to mention the many other high cuisines. Does anyone know who in NYC serves a real bowl of lime soup (a Yucatan specialty)? What about squash flour quesadillas? How about one decent green mole dish?

1) Use "Masa Harina" (a TM for Mexican corn meal) for making tortillas, gorditas, sopes, tamales, etc., but don't expect authenticity. Mexican "masa" is available at tortillerias in major U.S. cities and is much better--it's made fresh. And the lime issue and nutrition...well, this process has been used for thousands of years by Mesoamericans and I believe they figured out that the real nutrition came from the various fillings, garnishes, chiles, salsas, etc. Don't use American "corn flour" unless it is made from white corn (hominy) and intended for Mexican or Central American cuisine.

2) Fresh chiles are never packaged in plastic bags. Stay away from them. Mold grows much faster in a closed environment. Go to your local supermarket. You'll find fresh chiles, all kinds.

The problem with all of you know-it-alls it that you've never been to New Mexico. Here Spaniards are not immigrants. Anglo-Saxons are. We have no need to import out tacos from exotic locales. We settled here and remained here. So while you foodies jump on the lastest trend we settlers will continues to eat what is simply food.

The term that comes to mind after reading your rant is xenophobia, especially since you are not aware that Spaniards are also immigrants, and that tacos are indigenous to North America, not to Europe, be it Mediterranean (Spanish, et al) or Northern (Anglo et al).

When the gachupines (pejorative for Spaniards) arrived in what is today New Mexico they had no idea what a taco was. Or a tortilla mexicana, for that matter. A tortilla, a la española, was (and still is) an omelet.

New Mexico is a great state. Saludos a mis amigos hispanos! But don't go jingoistic on us, mdmartinx! You, just as I, are a mestizaje of all of those who went before us.