Category Archives: Austin, TX

Austin Taco All-Stars: Tacos La Flor

Posted by Citizen Taco, June 30, 2010 at 5:45 PM

With an almost unquantifiable number of taco trucks and Mexican restaurants in this town, I hesitate to name any of them the “best in Austin,” but the little blue trailer that is Tacos La Flor comes as any to winning that designation.

La Flor camps out beside a nondescript convenience store on a transitional stretch of South First Street, some ten to twelve minutes from downtown by car. Guarded by two warped wooden picnic tables and a four-legged umbrella, La Flor offers little in the way of dine-in atmosphere, catering mostly to drivers en route.

What puts La Flor above all the other taco poseurs are their homemade tortillas, hands down the best in the city. (Full disclosure: I can only speak for the corn tortillas, in part because that’s the way a real taco should be ordered, but mostly because of my wheat-intolerance). The corn tortillas at La Flor have an unparalleled strength and a powerful, ever-present flavor, pleasantly reminiscent of warm pita bread. They also bear a miraculous crispy rim, almost like a tiny pizza crust. As you bite into your taco you might think you’ve hit a tortilla chip, but no, it’s just the crunch of the hardened circumference.

La Flor does five types of beef tacos (six before they nixed the B.B.Q.): bistec, slightly fatty and marinated in tomato sauce with onions; desebrada, shredded; guisada, stewed; picadillo, sloppy joe-style ground beef with squares of stewed potato; and fajita, char-grilled with onions. Both the beef and chicken fajita come out charred and a little crunchy, making them the best of the bunch. The carnitas are good too, not quite as crispy or fatty as I usually like, but still very flavorful and served in generous portions. Chicharrones (fried pork rinds) are moist and doughy, a primarily textural experience that’s more like eating torn bits of salty, fatty fried bread than the skin of a pig.

But La Flor’s best creation has to be their simple bean-and-egg taco, my favorite breakfast taco in the breakfast taco capitol of the U.S. Anchored by a hearty corn tortilla, the egg is fresh-cracked, barely scrambled and fried into a thin disc, and the pinto beans are only halfway to refried. Other options include bacon, ham or sausage, grilled potatoes, and fresh nopales (cactus). And when it comes to salsa, La Flor removes any choice in the matter and makes only one: a mild peppery red tomato mixture that works perfectly on every taco.

I recommend lubricating your meal with a Mexican Coke, Topo Chico or six pack of Negra Modelo from the convenience store. And be sure to plan the trip to La Flor in advance. It’s out of the way even for most Austin residents, and like a number of the best Mexican food spots in town (Juan in a Million, Tacodeli, El Meson) they close early.

Tacos La Flor

4901 South 1st Street, Austin TX 78745
512-417-4214
7 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily

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Austin, Texas: Birria (Goat Meat) at El Borrego de Oro

Posted by Citizen Taco, June 9, 2010 at 2:15 PM

Los Angeles, Chicago, and select locales like San Jose in California, don’t know how good they have it. They’ve been blessed with an abundance of birrierias—Mexican taquerias that specialize in birria (goat meat). As a result, only a small minority of the country has ever sat at a restaurant and ordered a plate of steaming stewed goat.

Until I moved to Austin, I hadn’t either.

As soon as I arrived and started poking around, I heard about a little hole-in-the-wall down by the intersection of South Congress Avenue and Ben White Boulevard calledEl Borrego de Oro (“The Lamb of Gold”) that apparently served the best birria in town. With an extensive menu of traditional taqueria fare, El Borrego doesn’t qualify as a true birrieria, but the goat tacos stand up to anything you’ll find in the state of Texas. (Which reminds me, Houstonites should stop reading now and drive immediately to Gerardo’s Drive-in for their barbacoa de borrego.)

I’ve been to El Borrego dozens of times now and their birria taco is still one of my favorite tacos of all time. On a recent visit, in addition to the obligatory taco, I tried the caldo de birria, or goat stew soup.

The taco came out first, as if it were an appetizer. Stewed with tomatoes and onions, the small pile of meat needs nothing more than a homemade corn tortilla to contain it. Each bite starts out soft as you suck off the fat and juices, resolving slowly into a more stringy texture, like a tired carnitas or mild pulled pork. The primary flavors pop without being too spicy, and it always has a strange calming effect on me.

The caldo on the other hand, is far from relaxing. Though the broth is mild—the taste of hot peppers has been subdued over time—it has the saltiness of boiled blood, and not by accident.

Floating in the broth you’ll find nothing more than limp skeins of goat, from strings of shoulder meat and skin to ribbons of tripa (anyone who’s triedmenudo will know what to expect). When they give me a side of tortillas and a plate of cilantro, onions and minced jalapeno peppers to add to the soup, I can’t help but imagine it as the Mexican counterpart to Vietnamese pho, sans noodles.

But unlike pho, you can only sip so much of this broth before your lips start to pucker. The best way to approach the caldo is with a tortilla in hand, on which to spoon dripping mats of the soup meat. In the end, the combination of cooked meats and grilled corn masa is unbeatable.

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The Best Vegan Summer Sweets in Austin, Texas

Posted by Citizen Taco, June 2, 2010 at 2:45 PM

Skip all the shaved ice and snow cone trucks. And if you pass the hometown favorite Amy’s Ice Creams (Cold Stone Creamery minus the cloying corporate culture), or any errant fro-yo, keep on moving. The best summer sweet bites in Austin lurk a little farther afield, and happen to be, for the sake of this roundup, vegan.

Yes, summertime screams for dairy milk ice cream, but I prefer something lighter, a little less sweet, and a lot more rejuvenating in the languid Southern heat. So though they may be outrageously delicious, I’d also bypass certain crowd-pleasing trailer foods; namely, Gourdough’s made-to-order doughnuts and the cake balls at Holy Cacao (get any of the homemade vegan chocolates—goji caramel, coconut macaroon—at Cheer Up Charlie’s instead).

Two top-tier vegan eateries, Beets Living Foods Café and Borboleta Gourmet, home-make outstanding cookies, cake slices and vegan ice creams, but at frustratingly high prices. A similar story goes for the dessert case at the meditative macrobiotic mecca Casa de Luz. For something just as tasty, at half the price, try any of these six establishments.

Check out the photos in the slideshow »

Toy Joy

2900 Guadalupe Street, Austin TX 78705 (map); 512-320-0090
toyjoy.com

Thai Fresh

909 W. Mary Street, Austin TX 78704 (map); 512-494-6436
thai-fresh.com/

Veracruz All Natural

1704 E. Cesar Chavez, Austin TX 78702 (map); 512-963-1428
veracruzallnatural.com

GoodPop

11800 N. Lamar, Austin TX 78753 (map); 512-775-1353
goodpops.com

Counter Culture

120 E N Loop, Austin TX 78751 (map)
countercultureaustin.com

Bananarchy

700 South Lamar Boulevard, Austin TX 78704 (map);
214-883-3473
bananarchy.net/blog

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