Member-only story
I Just Want Tacos. Where Can I Find a Good Taco?
First question, crunchy or soft? It’s unwise to assume your taco is my taco. The decades long pursuit of quality tacos is a bottomless quest. Over the years friends and complete strangers when polled wince at the idea of a hard shell taco. And there are those who believe, what self-respecting foodie would eat that floppy mess. My philosophy, let the taco do the talking.
Some days a soft flour tortilla hugging the ingredients satisfies. Other days, a crispy crunch of a hard shell, taco juices running down the hand is sublime. Don’t judge the taco by its “wrapper”. For those anti hard shell or soft, there is bound to be a taco out there even the most ardent couldn’t resist. The exercise is to find that elusive original food pocket that satiates the most discerning food critic.
It’s a big world out there. So many taco trucks, shacks and sit-down restaurants to sample. Let’s begin with, where did tacos come from? The academic estimate is the 18th century in colonial Mexico. Academic? Yes, a journalist wrote a book about the history and origins of tacos, “Planet Taco, A Global History of Mexican Food” . Not to be confused with the restaurant in New York City bearing the same name.
Some food writers in the know date the taco to pre-colonial times in Mexico, therefore no specific origin or date is known. Some…
