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Review: The Taco Bus

September 7, 2010 in Food, Just for Fun, Personal, Random Musings, Tacos with 1 Comment

The last time I reviewed tacos were 44 days ago, on July 25th. I promise not to go that long before reviewing another taco stand.

With that in mind I have to apologize since its been over a week since I went to the Taco Bus in Tampa, FL with a few friends and some new stories to share with you.

I had heard many good things about the Taco Bus and most importantly that it was open 24/7 from my friend Naomi. This was a God send since we did not get to the Taco Bus until almost 10:30 p.m. after originally planning for a 9 p.m. meet up and pushing it back a half hour due to a late addition to the crew.

The night started with confusion as to who was going to drive and where we were to meet up, and once that was settled it was a waiting game for my friends Wes and Jessica to meet us at Megan’s so we could all drive to Tampa and have some delicious tacos. Since my friend Naomi was coming I figured we would all drive back to Oldsmar after filling up on tacos and going to the Oldsmar Taphouse since they have a good assortment of ciders. One thing you need to know about Naomi is that she loves cider.

Little did I know that we would be taking two cars to get to Tampa. Taking two cars somewhere is always a big mistake people: just carpool, its easier and much more fun. Megan and I decided that we were done waiting and drove to Wes’ house to pick them up. As we arrived Jessica was getting out of her car and then we were off to pick up gas and then off to Tampa for tacos!

As all of this is happening I am telling my friend Theresa when to leave her place in St. Pete so that she can get there when we do and texting Naomi that we were on our way and feeling quite annoyed that we weren’t there and that the night was going to turn sour on me. I wear my emotions on my sleeve. It is not something that I am not proud of, specially when I am in a bad mood, and figured it would be easy to see that I was not having a good time.

Thankfully its quite easy to have a conversation with Megan and she, unknowingly I think, diffused my bad mood with good conversation. We drove on SR 580 to Tampa since it would be easier to keep track of Jess and Wes 1 than if we had gone on I-275. After a few red lights that we, on accident I swear, forced Jessica to run some red lights and fiddling around on Megan’s iPod to find the right station for her FM Transmitter we got there. That is, we got there after we had to make a “dramatic” u-turn when I was sure that the Taco Bus was located on the north side of Hillsborough Ave. when in fact it was located on ourside of the road. Dumb me.

We were almost an hour and 15 minutes late but we got there, and I made Naomi turn back so that I could give her a belated birthday present 2.

As everyone was getting out of their cars my friend Theresa was arriving. After some quick introductions and a hug and good bye to Naomi we were ready to order. I promised Megan that because she was gracious enough to drive that I’d buy her food.

The Tacos Bus is not what you expect. Yes, there is a bus where all the cooking is done and where they take your order, but it has an attached building right next to the bus where you can sit and eat, as well as table and chairs outside. It had been raining earlier so naturally we decided to eat inside.

I went with my usual ordering of chicken, steak, and pork tacos. My brother had tweeted earlier in the month that he was there and that they had cochinita pibil tacos. For those of you who do not know cochinita pibil happens to be the specialty of the great state of Yucatan where I happen to hail from. If I could eat anything for the rest of my life it would be chochinita pibil. Sadly the Taco Bus does not offer tacos al pastor. This disappointed me a bit since its THE taco to get and the one that truly defines you as a great taco stand. In a reply tweet I was told that their sister restaurant features al pastor tacos. While this is nice to know, its still a let down to me.

Taco Bus tacos

So let’s get right down to the nitty gritty of this obscenely long blog post: the tacos were good. They didn’t blow my mind and they weren’t as good as La Cabaña del Tio. They certainly aren’t the greatest tacos in the Tampa Bay area as most other people like to claim. As a St. Pete times reviewer once mentioned, they don’t make their own tortillas which does affect the taste. While they do give you two tortillas in your taco, you can tell they are not made right on the spot which takes away from the experience in my opinion.

Secondly the food wasn’t as tasty as I thought it was going to be, and to me it seemed that the onions were a bit undercooked. It was a bit of a bland taco and you had to add the hot sauces and lime in order to really give it some good flavor. Maybe I am what Megan calls “idealistic” in what I expect from my tacos since everyone else liked them and thought they were the bees knees. I don’t think I am. I’ve tasted good tacos, recently I might add you, and these were decent but not good enough for me to drive to another county to get them 3.

Wes eating a tamale while Theresa watches.

The appeal of the Taco Bus is that its good Mexican food that is accessible at all hours of the day seven days a week. I can get behind that. I’m all for that. Its cheap too. A few days later Megan and I happened to be in the neighborhood for a party that we were invited to 4 and we happened to go to Taco Bus again after a long night of getting our faces rocked at a house show and the tacos I got were much better. Maybe it was because Megan and I happened to have been starving and had drank a bottle of Jameson between us, but the tacos hit the spot right then and there.

Megan and Jessica at Taco Bus. Megan once again gives me "The Look" while Jessica just sits there seemingly unaware that I am taking a picture.

In all I had a good time at Taco Bus. Many laughs were had and lots of impromptu pictures were taken. Plus, my friends discovered the magic of Tres Leches cake. It was the best surprise of the night for sure. Great idea Jessica in thinking of getting dessert after tacos!

Do you know what is the best thing about these tacopalooza adventures? Its not the actual tacos. No, the food is just the excuse to go out and have a good time with people that make me happy to still be alive.

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Notes:

  1. Wes is awful at directions by the way and I don’t know how good Jessica is at finding places. ↩
  2. She texted me that she had to work at 4am at Starbucks as we were driving to the Taco Bus. I had a bottle of Jameson to give her for her birthday. I don’t normally give gifts to friends since I can never gauge if its cool or not, but Naomi went out of her way to get me a bottle of delicious Bulleit Bourbon so I knew it was okay if I did the same. Plus, she did invite me to a birthday shin dig that she was having last year when we first met. Naomi is good people. ↩
  3. To be fair they are opening a second location in St. Petersburg at the end of November 2010. It will be located at 2324 Central Ave, St. Pete. 33712. ↩
  4. One of the craziest and funnest nights of my life ↩

Review: La Cabaña del Tio

July 25, 2010 in Food, Just for Fun, Personal, Random Musings, Tacos with 2 Comments

La Cabana del Tio front

The sky started to darken around 6 p.m. and soon heavy rain fell. It was at first a sigh of relief from the 63% humidity and upper 80s temperature that had plagued us all morning and afternoon and would mean things would cool down for a brief period of time. The first thing that I thought was that it might hamper my plans for last night’s inaugural Taconazo Tampa Bay at La Cabaña del Tio and that the heavy rain would mean I would be eating alone and going back home early; I wouldn’t blame my friends for not wanting to go out since Pinellas is notorious for having some of the worst maintained roads imaginable, specially in the area of Drew Street in Clearwater where the taco stand is located. Let us not forget that Florida drivers are just crazy and awful and their bad driving skills are augmented. The first victim of the bad weather was my very good friend Megan who was caught in bad traffic and declining weather conditions in Orlando. Then there is Wes who was unsure that he would make it as his sister was driving in from Atlanta that evening. He later informed me that Andrew had come down with a case of food poisoning. So far I was down three out of the four friends that I was told would come.

I took my time getting to the taco stand and since there was no need to rush since I figured I would be eating alone. As I pulled into the tiny strip mall and walked towards the establishment when I was greeted by Drew, Amy, Evan and Amy! Soon Megan joined us and our taco adventure began.

La Cabaña del Tio is tiny and offers very little eating space. It is in the heart of Clearwater’s Mexican community and its meant for you to come in, order and take it home which is a short walk for most residents in that area. There are three tables: two with seats for four, and one with seating for two. Most of the seating space is in the counter where you can watch the ladies making the tortillas out of fresh masa and watch them cook your food. Besides tacos they offer empanadas, gorditas, and enchiladas. They offer a variety of drinks, including some of the best horchata that I have ever had. Crisp, slightly sweet and cool to the throat on such a hot day. The food, like promised, is cheap in price and rich in flavor. I ordered three tacos –pork, chicken and beef– with a tall glass of horchata and the total came out to be $9.55. Not too shabby if I do say so.

While waiting for the food I was pointing out on a map of Mexico where I was born, where I lived and where I have been in the country. I talked about the best tacos that I ever had in Mexico and how taquerias in Mexico are similar to this one, and that the best tacos are always found in the mercados of the local towns. The food came out relatively quickly and its aroma intoxicated my senses. I waited a bit to start to eat my food since I told the girl behind the counter I would be placing the orders for all my friends since none of them knew much Spanish. In doing so I met a couple who were there when we first got there who also didn’t know anything about Spanish. They asked me how many times I had been to the place and I told them that I had not heard of it until the St. Petersburg Times mentioned it in their Weekend section.  We got to talking about how I’m writing about all the taco stands in Pinellas and in the Tampa area, they wished me luck and were telling me that this is their favorite place so far to eat tacos. I was pleased and excited after this little talk, not to mention anxious to start to eat my tacos.

After everyone’s orders were in, I started to dig in on the tacos.

Chicken, al pastor and beef tacos. In that order.

The tacos themselves are very simple: tortilla with your choice of meat with cilantro and onions, with a lime to squeeze on to the tacos and a very mild salsa that is all taste and hardly no kick; a great addition since you do not want to over power the original taste of the tacos and its contents. I added the lime and salsa to each of my tacos and started with the bistek (beef) taco. With my first bite I knew this was a very special place and it had nothing to do with the contents of what was in between the corn tortilla but with the tortilla itself: it was not flaky and it did not crumple. It was thick enough to add its own taste to the taco and yet thin enough that it did not over power the taste of the beef, cilantro, onions, lime and salsa. I was in heaven.

After slowly savoring the taste of my first beef taco, I moved onto the taco al pastor. Now tacos al pastor are a difficult thing to get right, at least it has always been that way in my experience: no two tacos al pastor taste the same. The trick to getting tacos al pastor right is getting the right combination of spices and every taqueria has their own combination of what they think is the best. Some combinations get the right balance between giving you the taste of the spices and the pork, and others tip it to either scale of being overpowering with spices (making it barely eatable) or not enough spices and leaving you with a rather bland pork taco.

This pastor taco was really good, though a bit too heavy on the spices for my taste. That may have been because of the salsa that I added, but I have noticed the tacos that I have eaten around here (both at Asadas Compadres and La Cabaña del Tio) that they lean more heavily on their spices than what I’ve had in the Yucatan (where they tend to focus a bit more on the juices of the pineapple and onion to give the dish a more balanced taste). Yet, despite this slight criticism it was tasty. Oh so tasty.

After two very satisfying tacos I was ready to move onto their chicken taco. Out of the three this was the weakest taco, but it was still delicious. Its hard to get a chicken taco wrong: its just chicken, how hard is it to get chicken? My only complain was that the chicken was a bit dry. I like my chicken tender and moist; not as dry as this one. I added a bit more salsa to this taco in order to make it tastier. Don’t get me wrong, it was still very good, but I am very particular about how I like my chicken.

Overall the experience was very pleasant. I loved the atmosphere of the place because it hardly had anything: there were no flashy decorations, just some chairs and tables, stools, a cooler with drinks and Los Tigres del Norte playing on the TV. I felt comfortable, at ease, and contemplative all at the same time. It reminded me of being back in Mexico. It was bittersweet.

If you decide to go to La Cabaña del Tio make sure you bring cash as its the only form of payment they accept. Everything is bare bones with them. There is little parking in the strip mall where they are located and don’t be afraid to just point at the things that you want on the menu if you can’t communicate with them properly. They speak some English, but not much, so speak slowly.

Some lessons that came to me in hindsight are the following:

  • Take a picture of the menu: that way it gives readers a chance to see what is offered besides tacos.
  • Take notes on all the things that you can add to your tacos.
  • Take pictures of the inside of the establishment.
  • Ask questions to the proprietors  on where they are from, and in the case of La Cabaña del Tio where they purchase their masa (so I can make my own tortillas!).