Tacos Tumbras a Tomas is in the Grand Central Market in LA. For the most part, I hate LA but I might move there for this market. This is definitely the best carnitas I’ve ever had. My lady claims the same and so do many Yelpers. One guy even states “By far the best Carnitas I have had in my life, US or Mexico.”

So what you see above is a huge carnitas taco. It defies all other carnitas I’ve had. It’s not greasy but it is tender. It’s delicious and flavorful but not heavy. It doesn’t even need garnish. There seems to be some magical mixture of cilantro, onions, and spices in the meat. This is first taco I’ve eaten to get 5 sombreros! I think that calls for a margarita…

What you see below is an absurdly huge asada burrito with about 75 lbs of meat.

The Market

Tacos Tumbras a Tomas

Beautiful meat selection

Another vendor, selling tons of peppers and spices

Where do you think flavor comes from?

Olvera Street is the birthplace of Los Angeles! Now it’s a tiny tourist trap with serapes and masks everywhere and some little tacos shops.

At Rodolfo’s we enjoyed some very authentic asada, chicken, and carnitas tacos there. Then we ordered a more-American hard shell taco which was fried-to-order – yes! Getting these tacos at such a tourist trap makes me believe that even bad California tacos are better than most east coast tacos.

From Timeout: 5 Burro Café The owners of a 20-year-old Forest Hills Tex-Mex cantina open a sister location in Brooklyn, serving the same menu of tacos, fajitas and nachos. The bonus: a garden ideal for sipping the margaritas in the heat.

127 Columbia St between DeGraw and Kane Sts, Brooklyn (718-875-5515)

5burrocafe.com

For Cinco de Mayo, we went to Papacito’s in Greenpoint (999 Manhattan Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11222 – (718) 349-7292). I’ve been told it’s one of the best. Well, it’s pretty damn good. The tacos are bigger than usual. Three will leave you full. I like that each type of filling corresponds with it’s own toppings. I got to munch on the fish, chicken, and verde pork tacos. No going wrong with those. Tecates were $1!!

Read on…

The place was packed as shit, because of the holiday, but we got a seat outside. Papacito’s recently(?) expanded and took over the ex-psychic next door. They are now twice as big inside and have direct access to their outdoor patio. The newish bartender, who didn’t know the price of a tequila shot, was kind of an aloof idiot. The hostess was typically stand offish per her pretty head. The waiters and bus boys were working hard and getting stuff done. I approve.

Chris eagerly awaiting a table and a Tecate

Dug this old thing up from Oct. 22nd 2009. We’re talkin’ the renovated Tacos Nuevo Mexico at 489 5th Ave, Brooklyn. Park Slope? Sunset Park? I dunno.

What we got there is a spicy pork taco and a veal brain taco! Don’t be afraid of the brain, it’s like a braised meat and it has so much garnish it doesn’t matter! You are what you eat. I remember it being pretty damn good but I also got pretty drunk after so who knows. I’m giving it 4/5 nonetheless.

Gave FnF a second try today. (A second taco try, that is. I’ve eaten quite a few of their burritos). I ordered 1 chicken, 1 beef, and 1 vegetable taco. However, I just received 3 vegetable tacos instead and by vegetable I mean, rice-and-bean tacos. That said, they were good and didn’t make me feel dirty like the other tacos did. I hope next time to eat some meat. The mango shake was pretty good.

Brownstoner reports a new taco place coming to 4th ave. Of course, after I move from 4th ave! People are speculating if it’s the same Oaxaca from Smith St. I hope not because I’m about equidistant to Smith St so I’d like a new place to try!

Ethan Hawke was eating tacos in Brooklyn and some shit went down! Eating tacos can be a dangerous sport. Unfortunately, no one mentions where he was eating or if it was good!

After spying this photo, looks like they were filming in Brownsville, which is pretty serious!

I’ve noticed this weird loading dock creation while driving by on Tillary St. I just thought someone had put some Christmas lights on their loading dock – because it’s no place for a food cart! But The Brooklyn Paper informs me that this is god damn taco cart! Now, only if it weren’t impossible to get to on foot. I used to live on Tillary and Gold St. Literally dodging bullets on the way to the bodega back then, I hope I grab a taco, un-grazed!

The Loading Dock
170 Tillary St. between Flatbush Avenue and Gold Street
Tuesday-Sunday, 11 am-3 pm
Wednesday-Saturday, 6-10 pm.
Cash only.

[A taco cart opens in Downtown — no, this is big]

Barrio Chino at 253  Broome St. in the Lower East Side is quite good. The wait is long and the tables are tiny but the food is awesome. DO get the fish tacos for $8. DO also get the Jalapeño Margarita. DO NOT get the Habanero Margarita unless you think Phall Curry goes down like ice cream.

Habanero Margarita (ouch!)

Go to La Superior at 295 Berry St. Just stop reading this and go. Oh, and get the beef tongue taco – it’s not chewy, it’s like pork belly – but beefy. Just get it and shut up.

I got shrimp, steak, and beef tongue tacos. All good – tongue was the best. Decent prices also, here’s the menu [pdf].

Tacos!

Quesadilla.

Gauc.

Fast and Fresh at 84 Hoyt St. gets toooooooons of praise around town – real ass kissing occurs. I was excited to go there. It’s a side-street, hole-in-the-wall deli where local Mexicans chow down and it’s acclaimed by Californians. Californians always know what’s up! (debatable) When we arrived, we ordered up chicken, salted beef, carnitas and, last but not least, goat tacos!  (goat is pictured above)

I’ll firstly comment on “Fast”. We waited about 15 minutes for 4 tacos and beans. Strike Uno! This is a deli with no one in it, not a restaurant. And believe me – the meats aren’t cooked to order. 15 minutes in a deli is the same as 4 hours in a restaurant.

The goat was a bit goaty as one might expect but it wasn’t bad. I think it’s preparation is where it failed. Dry, bland, chewy. Nothing tastes good like that.

The chicken (above) was actually the best one out of the bunch. It was grilled, a little crispy, and had a good sauce but was a bit…party? Meaning it included some parts that were not meat. It was also quite large.

Look at that pork! The carnitas looks delicious but for some reason was boring. It was also dry and chewy like it was cooked twice or maybe thrice. It was oily (in a bad way) and a bit dirty tasting (in a bad way).

Similar to the pork, the beef was dry, chewy and dirty. At this point, the tacos just aren’t appetizing so we failed to finish them. Overall, I found it neither Fast nor Fresh. The tacos did not embody any feeling of freshness. I felt kind of dirty afterwords. With the taste test over, we moved on to some beans!

I’ve been going to Los Pollitos II in Park Slope for many years now. Not because it’s great but because there isn’t any real competition close by (Mezcals is slop, in my opinion). Well, it was time to try their tacos as it’s been a while since I had them. I ordered 1 shrimp ($3), 1 pork ($2.25), and 1 chicken ($2.25)

The shrimp was taco was decent – it’s hard to fuck up shrimp. There was no discernible sauce on the shrimp so it was a little boring. And way too much lettuce (as pictured).

The pork taco was bland and was piled with lettuce – I rather call this one a salad taco. And lastly, the chicken taco; well, we don’t even have to talk about it. Sadly, I have to give these taco a rating of 2. With a few minor adjustments, they have a real chance of being good. But for now, I wouldn’t get them again. Los Pollitos’ specialties are enchiladas and burritos – go there for that. Not the tacos.

They have three kinds of tacos for $3 each – fish, chorizo and tofu. An extra buck gets you a deluxe version, which as far as I could tell only means that it has guacamole on top. Seemed kind of pricey to me, but it really is quite a trek out there so I couldn’t begrudge them too much. I guess I got used to eating the lunchtime half-priced tacos at Papacito’s during my unemployment and my sense of pricing has become skewed. So I ordered a couple deluxe fish tacos and a special elote (an ear of corn with mayonnaise, lime, cheese and pepper).

The tacos that were delivered by the cute surfer-girl-waitress looked pretty disappointing. The fish was battered and fried, held in one dry tortilla, covered in guacamole and lettuce with a few radishes as garnish. No sauce. Though, we were brought both homemade red and green salsas that vastly improved the tacos. Otherwise, they were pretty tasteless. The corn was also mediocre; boiled or steamed, not grilled, and kind of tough. The guacamole was delicious though; just the right amount of chunky versus creamy and super fresh. I immediately regretted not ordering just a side of guacamole, which they serve with tortilla or plantain chips. Yum.

My friend and I finished our tacos and were still hungry, but didn’t want to spend more cash so we walked back to the S train at 98th Street to make the long journey back to Northern Brooklyn. It’s not worth a trip and I am not sure if I will make it back there this summer, but if I end up nearby and hungry I will definitely be stopping by to eat more of that guacamole and maybe try one of their fruit drinks or quesadillas. They are off my taco list though.

I am secretly a beach bum Californian at heart trapped in the body and life of a New Yorker. Fish tacos and the beach are probably my two most beloved things. When I go out to LA my first stop is always a taco truck (where even the iceberg lettuce tastes fresh and delicious) followed by a trip to to the beach. So while I am trapped in New York during the summer, I often make the long trek out to Jacob Riis Beach and obsessively search for a decent approximation of my beloved fish taco. So far my favorite has been Papacito’s in Greenpoint. They are big and greasy but also delicious, fresh and cheap!

http://rockawaytaco.com/

We finally got to try out Calexico Carne Asada in Red Hook. It’s kinda off the beaten path so we rode our bikes over there. Our tacos came very fast and very fresh (unlike our experience at Fast and Fresh).  We ordered carne asada $4, chicken $3(above), and pulled pork $3 tacos.

All tacos seem to be served with a bed of raw cabbage in them, which adds texture but not flavor. The chicken was grilled, tender, and juicy – all wonderful things. Not overly interesting but fresh and delicious.

Next up was carne asada, which better be good since it’s 2/3 of the restaurant’s name! Well, the steak was pretty good but a little over cooked. I have to say, I enjoyed OAXACA’s steak taco a bit more.

The pulled pork had great texture, but could use some more TLC in the seasoning department. When I think of Mexicans and pork, I think of sabor! It was also a bit drippy which I never understand.

Did I have a few complaints? Yes. However, was it still damn good? Yes. Am I annoyed it’s in the middle of nowhere? You bet. Am I giving it 4 sombreros? Si.

A lot of people are excited about the street-vendor-turned-store-front, Calexico.

Katrina from The Brooklyn Beat writes, “After living in Los Angeles for 4 years, it takes a lot to impress me with yummy Mexican goodness, but I have to say these boys have got it down!”

Mark from from Queens says “Coming from a born-and-bred Austinite (very fond of Mexican food) this place rocks it. No other way to describe it. The food is top-notch, authentic, and affordable.”

Nevertheless, we’ll be trying it out this weekend – along with the much-hyped Fast and Fresh Deli -@ 84 Hoyt St.

I ordered carnitas, chicken and vegetarian. The tacos look pretty good – which made me excited. I started with the chicken:

I never expect a chicken taco to be that impressive but usually it’s never bad. This one was pretty standard, non-shredded chicken. It was bland and a little dry and needed hot sauce to give it some flavor. Unimpressed.

Here we have the vegetarian taco which looks amazing! It has refried beans on the tortilla then topped with a bunch of vegetables which look tasty. For whatever reason, the only thing I could taste was lettuce. Avocado had no salt on it, so it was completely flavorless. It was basically a salad on a tortilla – a total letdown and a mess.

And now, what Mexicans do best – pork! This poor guy, I couldn’t even finish him because he was so nasty. I think he got caught up in one of Cha-Cha’s grills because he tasted like fish and had a very strange consistency – more mushy than stringy. I would never get this one again and I’m glad it didn’t give me diarrhea.

Conclusion: I’m hoping we can find our odl taco truck again. Iwould have given this 1 sombrero because of the terrifying pork but since the food nearby is actually much worse, I’m giving it 2.

We stumbled across the street fair on Smith Street last week so I decided to try a taco at El Pitayo . We’ve eaten there before with little success (I can’t remember what I ate) but $3 is worth trying something twice. First off, this thing is huge! The tortilla is almost the size of the plate. It was the end of the day so maybe they were trying to get rid of food; I don’t know. For $3, it’s a pretty frugal purchase. The tortilla is flour (as expected at a Tex-Mex place) but I liked it. The chicken was not hot – blame that on the street-based kitchen. It was also wet and dripping, which I always find obnoxious in tacos or burritos. It was also stewed which can usually yield a pretty flavorful chicken, yet flavorful this was not. The salt was there but other basic seasonings were lacking. Overall, I wouldn’t eat it again but I appreciate the value so I’m giving it 2 sombreros