Way before the blog you’re reading got started, there was Chili Bob’s Houston Eats. It’s not pretty. It’s got a blogspot.com suffix on it. His food photos could use some work. I think his first name is Bruce.
Here is his humble mantra. (Read in Kevin Spacey’s voice for added effect.)
I’m a food explorer and reporter, not a restaurant critic, a food nerd rather than a foodie or fooderatti. This blog records my excursions exploring Houston’s great diversity of eateries with an emphasis on ethnic and national cuisines, peasant food and neighborhood eateries as opposed to haute cuisine or trendy foodie hot spots plus some Texas specialties like barbeque and sausage. These are the sorts of places that make Houston such a great place to live and eat out. The blog is mostly about places that are new to me instead of old favorites and there’s a little emphasis on places in the southwestern corner of the city, where I live, but I do roam all over. I don’t make recommendations, I just report what I had.
Chili Bob is a mystery. He isn’t on Twitter. He doesn’t get nominated for anything. You won’t see him at any foodie functions. He doesn’t get invited to be a food judge at foodie events. He doesn’t go on Houston Chowhound food crawls or throwdowns. He will not be featured on Cleverly Stone’s morning show, or wear a navy blazer to a Culturemap gala. He doesn’t enjoy handcrafted cocktails at Beaver’s on industry night. If asked to participate in a Cadillac Challenge, I assume that he would respond like Edward Norton responded to his office manager in Fight Club.
No one has ever seen a photo of Chili Bob.
Yet Chili Bob’s blog tells more about Houston’s food scene diversity than any other, aside of established food critics that do this for a living. Maybe even more so.
His blog is an unintentional testament to the diversity of Houston food. Look at the categories on the left side of the page. Keep scrolling. And scrolling.
He finds everything. Every time I find a new taco truck, he finds a damn tunnel underneath it that leads to some Guatemalan turkey soup, Ethiopian beets, or South Indian lentil donuts.
Here’s a guest post from taco champ Jeff Timpanaro, who has possibly found the ugliest taco stand of all time. Humble, TX. – GunsandTacos
Just as I was just about to open my pie hole – again – to bitch about the lack of taco trucks in my community, up pops Tortas El Tortugo, less than one mile from my house. It has likely been there for years, but in my trafficky haste I’ve just never noticed it. So I guess it didn’t “pop up” as much as it entered my awareness. Happy day.
This morning it was time to make my first visit. After all, I’d just completed some lab work which required a morning fast. As those who know and love me will attest, the only thing I hate worse than missing breakfast is being trapped in the shower when Aerosmith comes on the radio. Read the rest…
My coworker Pablo took the bus to work this morning. An engine belt broke, and he had to pick up the belt at an auto parts store.
“Where do you live, Pablo?”
“North Gessner.”
“That place where all the tacos are?”
“Yep.”
“Need a ride home?”
North Gessner, in the Spring Branch area, is a taco lover’s paradise. The streets are strewn with taco stands and taquerias. I knew the auto parts store might close, but hey, I’m shopping for tacos here.
If you're advertising the best tacos in town, you'd better deliver!
I saw the Jarro Cafe taco truck on the left, and hit my brakes in the middle of North Gessner. I had seen that logo before, remembering Robb Walsh’s Top Ten Taco Trucks list from 1995. This one was on the top of the list. It’s also been featured on Addie Broyle’s food blog, and was one of the historic Austin Meets Houston Taco Tour stops.
As a matter of principle, I like to stop at the lesser known taco stands, the places that might have a unique taco meat selection and regional salsas. But I’m not missing the “number one” taco stand. I can’t just drive past it.
As you can see, the sign clearly states “The Best Tacos in Town”. Hearing the cars crash behind me as I u-turned my boat-car, I noticed that the other side of the sign read “The Best Salsas in Town”. I pulled up and jogged to the taco stand as if I was carrying a styrofoam cooler containing a heart transplant.
Oddly enough, the stand is in front of an actual restaurant of the same name. Others may not understand my logic, but why go inside a restaurant when there’s a taco truck right here?
This taco trailer was in tip-top shape, with polished stainless everywhere. These people knew exactly what they were doing.And then I saw the menu. Every taco meat I’d ever heard of was on the list, in Spanish and English. Shazzam!
Even suadero tacos. And suadero, my friends, is something you want to sink your teeth into.
Their tacos were priced at $1.50 each, and there was a five dollar special that advertised three tacos and a drink. Although I had a feeling their fajita tacos would be top-notch, I decided to go with some of the more unusual fare.
Cochinita Pibil, Campechano, and Suadero.
Campechano: Chorizo and beef. That’s right, in the same taco. Jarro Cafe claims this is their specialty.
Cochinita Pibil: Yucatan-style pulled pork.
Suadero: An excellent type of beef, a cut, texture, and flavor that is perfect for tacos.
These tacos were served with lime, grilled onions, cilantro, and radishes. The radishes were a great touch, and reminded me of the Tijuana taco stands that served whole radishes with every taco order.
I tried the campechano first. I thought the beef and sausage combo was unusual, and I was right. It was unusually awesome. This was grade-A chorizo, and the two textures were perfect together. I generously applied the bright-orange salsa from a nearby plastic container. It accented these meats perfectly.
Then I tried the cochinita pibil. It had a texture similar to canned sloppy joe mix, for lack of a better description. It had an interesting smoky and tangy flavor, with an obvious influence of dried peppers. I could tell you more, but I pretty much scarfed it down in order to get to the prize taco. It was good, but the lesser of the three. Hey, there’s gotta be one, right?
I applied lime generously to the champion suadero.
“Best salsas in town?” I thought to myself.
“Let’s see what they’ve got”.
I asked the lovely taco lady if she had anything hotter. She smiled and pulled another container from ice, which contained neon green salsa. This salsa would literally glow beneath a black light, if given the chance. I giggled like a little girl as I dumped this stuff all over my suadero taco.
It tasted magnificent. It was absolutely spectacular. And it was really hot. I mean, the orange stuff was hot by most non-Texan standards, but this neon-green wondersauce was the stuff of legends. It was nuclear.
I handed the bottle to Pablo, but he had already killed his three tacos.
“Pablo, please get another taco so you can try this stuff”.
My friend Randy Taguchi, an author from Kanagawa, Japan, told me she was heading to Okinawa to get some tacos. Ludicrous, I thought. There are no tacos in Japan. Something is amiss.
Another friend of mine explained that Randy probably meant “tako”, the Japanese word for octopus. This made sense, maybe I had misunderstood.
However, Randy specifically told me she was going to Okinawa for tacos. And since she was headed to Okinawa, which is essentially the same as Americans heading to Hawaii, I suspected she wasn’t doing it just for a bunch of octopi.
Octopus in Japan is like, I dunno, ham in Delaware.
Then she sent me the photo on the left. I can’t tell if they’re crispy or soft tacos, but they are, in fact, tacos. Here are some more photos of Randy’s trip to Okinawa.
As happy as I was to see the heavenly glory of tacos spreading throughout the world, I was a bit disappointed that the bastardized American version of tacos ended up overseas, instead of the real thing. And something tells me that these were really expensive, when real tacos should only cost one dollar.
From what I understand, the influence of tacos came from the US Marines that were stationed in Okinawa back in the day. A local Okinawan chef realized the popularity of tacos with the soldiers, and created a dish called ‘taco rice’.
Taco rice is ground beef, seasoned with chili powder (sort of like 4-alarm Chili mixes), and served over a bed of rice with lettuce and cucumber. This dish is now so popular in Japan that it is served as a school lunch, and KFC has adapted it into their Japanese menus.
Here’s a Marine recipe for taco rice, and if you look at the comments you’ll see several guys that are sappy about this Okinawan cuisine. Someone decided it was a good idea to stuff the food into a tortilla, and at that point, the Taco went full circle and reinvented itself.
I had an in-depth conversation with Japan, as a whole, about their choice to use Casa Ole tacos instead of real tacos.I’m the guy in the video that resembles Bruce Lee, and the other guy is Japan.
Yes, I understand that Bruce Lee has nothing to do with Japan, but I thought it was fitting.
Thanks to Randy Taguchi for sharing the pictures!
Japanese taco machine. Photo courtesy of www.peterpayne.net
When you visit a taco truck, ask for a “soda naranja”. Even if you don’t care for orange soda, understand that this is what real caballeros wash down tacos with when it’s too early to drink beer. It’s imperative for these few major reasons:
This will effectively establish the fact that you know just WTF you’re talking about. This may keep them from putting lettuce and tomatoes on your tacos. If you walk away from a taco stand with lettuce and tomatoes on your taco, I hate to break it to you, Ace- but you’ve failed.
Orange soda goes great with genuine tacos.
Because real tacos are chased with either cold beer or cold orange soda. That’s the way it is, and if you don’t like it, go to Casa Ole and drink a bunch of crappy honky margaritas that were composed with that artificial sweet and sour stuff that kiddie popsicles are made of, and while you’re at it, enjoy some crispy ground-beef pseudo-tacos that might consist of floor scraps purchased from the Alpo factory.
It tastes a lot better than the US version of orange soda
The thick glass and large bumps on the neck of the bottle are designed to make it an optimal weapon, in the case someone should try to take your taco or salsa from you.
Disclaimer: If anyone reading this happens to be from somewhere other than Texas or California, I understand that quasi-Mexican food can be very palatable, and you may not even have access to a Taco Bell. I love this country, and every night I think of you and weep, swallowing the fact that many of my fellow Americans may never experience real tacos. Or real salsa.
So I guess it didn’t “pop up” as much as it entered my awareness. Happy day.
your taco, I hate to break it to you, Ace- but you’ve failed.