José R. Ralat - American Tacos: A History and Guide

American Tacos

A History and Guide

Jos R. Ralat

University of Texas Press

Austin

Copyright 2020 by Jos R. Ralat

All rights reserved

First edition, 2020

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University of Texas Press

P.O. Box 7819

Austin, TX 78713-7819

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ralat, Jos R., author.

Title: American tacos : a history and guide / Jos R. Ralat.

Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019026436

ISBN 978-1-4773-1652-8 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-4773-2099-0 (library ebook)

ISBN 978-1-4773-2100-3 (non-library ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: TacosUnited States.

Classification: LCC TX836 .R35 2020 | DDC 641.84dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019026436

doi:10.7560/316528

For my wife, Jessica, and our son, Diego, for their patience and humor, and for two of the best friends and traveling companions a person could ask for, John Daniel and Robert Strickland. None of this would be possible without you.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

Your Taco Country Guide

My passion for tacos began when I started dating my wife, Jessica, a Texas native of Mexican American heritage. Each time we called for takeout from the Chinese-owned Tex-Mex storefront along the Sunset Park stretch of Brooklyns Fifth Avenue, we ordered an extra batch of spongy, made-to-order flour tortillas. It made us feel like we were doing something humorously wrong. After all, my wife and I were living in Sunset Park, a Chinese and Latino enclave in south Brooklyn, where we could order tortas cubana the size of catchers mitts at the back of bodegas or charred frog legs from a signage-less street cart. But we needed those seemingly contraband flour tortillas. We needed them for breakfast tacos.

It started on a Saturday. That first morning I opened the sliding hollow wood door into the living roomkitchen area of our railroad apartment. A vermillion-stained package of Mexican chorizo lay torn open on the counter. Next to it was a carton of brown eggs. And she made breakfast tacos.

Those flour tortillasfreshly re-heated on the flames of our gas range and bearing the brown-to-black islands to show for itenveloped a reddish-orange mass of eggs and soft chorizo almost as spreadable as butter. A shot of shredded Longhorn cheese helped to bind the filling. And... silence. Saturday mornings were dedicated to breakfast tacos from then on.

Sunset Park was a great neighborhood in which to start my taco explorations. There are taco counters in the back of Mexican bodegas and taco stands on the streets. I remember one, a wood stall that leaned against a bodega, where a woman dished out two-dollar tacos de barbacoa de chivo. Pay a couple of bucks, get the taco handed to you with napkinsno plates!and head off to run your errands or to find a stoop and enjoy the gamy strings of bronzed goat meat. Down the street there was a restaurant decorated with crushed velvet that occasionally had a tomato-stewed, queso blancostuffed, squash blossom taco that melted herbacious and sweet. It was during a meal at Tacos Matamoros on Sunset Parks Fifth Avenuewhere I had already consumed several tacos de cabeza, the beef cheek meat studded with globules of fat demanding to be slurpedthat Jessica persuaded me to eat my first taco de lengua. The corn tortilla cradled steamed beef tongue topped with chopped white onion and cilantro to brighten up the meat. And, of course, we had that Chinese-run Tex-Mex delivery joint.

It wasnt as if I wasnt already obsessed with food. Sunset Park also had a Puerto Rican restaurant with Formica booths, white rice good enough to eat by itself, and a streetside walkup window where I ordered pastelillos (Puerto Rican empanadas) filled with cheese or ground beef. One bite and I was thrust, stomach first, back into my maternal grandmothers house in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, the town of my birth. There, mi mamita, Dolores Rivera, would fry up a batch of pastelillos for breakfast because nine-year-old me desperately needed those golden brown, rough-bubbled handpies at seven in the morning.

The restaurants roasted pigs foot and knuckle, plus half a roll of paper towels, was all I needed to recall the last time I saw Jos Antonio Maldonado, my maternal grandfather, Abuelo Papa. I was five. Both sides of the family, the Ralats and the Maldonados, were gathered at my grandparents housethe house where my mother grew up, where my folks met and fell in lovefor a farewell party. The next day, my parents, my sisters, and I were heading back to Florida. Summer vacation was over. And in walked Abuelo Papa, a whole-roasted pig across his broad, leathered shoulders. He swung it over his head and onto the table in front of me. I was barely tall enough to look over the table, but I was suddenly sitting on itAbuelo Papa had quickly lifted me onto the tablenext to the beast with crackling, tawny-colored skin. Metelo, Josito, he said. I reached behind the pigs ears and pulled with both hands. Its face easily separated from its skull in a salty blast of mi isla. I smiled, said Gracias, and hugged my grandfather. When we got back to Orlando, the call came that the old man had died. Undiagnosed heart trouble, I was told.

It would be years before I launched the Taco Trail blog and made food writing my full-time gig. My day job then was as the editor of a now-defunct New York Citybased neuropsychiatry journal, but I started freelancing for the New York Press (also defunct), writing personal essays, restaurant reviews, and installments for the Cheap Eats section. One piece featured what I considered to be the best restaurant along Arthur Avenue in the Bronxs Little Italy, Estrellita Poblana III.

Arthur Avenue, in the Belmont section of the Bronx, is renowned for its indoor retail market, mom-and-pop shops filled with imported goods, and, of course, Italian restaurants slinging pasta a million ways. Mexican food should be the last thing that comes to mind. Yet, just a fried calamaris throw from the likes of Dominicks and Umbertos Clam House II, where a red sauce-soaked plate costs more than a mid-twenty-something writer can afford, the diminutive Estrellita Poblana III caters to the immigrants, most from Puebla or Oaxaca, employed in the kitchens of the aforementioned restaurants. Its a microcosm of the Mexican immigrant community in New York.

Having heard the plaudits for this community for years, my wife and I, along with some friends, trekked an hour and a half on the D train from Brooklyn to the Bronx. We imagined the taste of fresh mozzarella and pancetta on our lips. The line for Casa della Mozzarella was long, but the prosciutto, sorpresseta, and parmesan were worth the wait. The same went for Teitel Brothers Wholesale Grocery. One hundred ravioli ran us $10.50 at another shop. And since food shopping works up a carbohydrate-lusting appetite, off we went for carbonara and matriciana. Everything was out of our budget.

Then we came across Estrellita Poblana III. We got a round of Mexican Cokes (the imported sodas are made with sugar, not corn syrup like its American progenitor). The tamales oaxaqueo, with a slide of mole in the center and banana leaf wrapper on the outside, reduced a friends speech to monosyllables: Must. Not. Waste. One. Taste. Must. Have. Again. The cheese enchilada was smothered in salsa and melting chunks of queso fresco piled atop its platter-length size. Two chicken breasts wore a thick shawl of mole poblano, garnished with sesame seeds. The sauce-like mole produced a burn that quickly worked its way up the nostrils, took a break in the sinuses, and rappelled down the throat. The cooks at Estrellita had succeeded where every other Mexican restaurant I had visited in New York had failed: they did mole justice. The accompanying yellow rice was fluffy, soaking up the mole. And the black beans were thick enough to eat with a fork, not a goopy mess. On a small plate was a pile of meat (goat, pork, chicken, and beef), lettuce, and cheese resting on two warm flour tortillas; tomatillo salsa or pico de gallo added a tangy bite.