La Palapa Restaurant & Cantina 6640 East Highway 290 Austin TX 78723
La Palapa is a place everyone who as lived in Austin for a long time knows about….and what great tacos! Crispy shell, lots and cheese and veggies, and nicely favored ground beef…..that wasn’t all drippy. Unlike your regular very flat corn tortillas, these shells were super crispy with the little bubbles you get from bread raising. The only negative thing is it seemed all the extras have a price tag (most places do but it seemed like everything did here). When my dining companion asked for a little guaq the wait person quoted the price….a couple tortillas, price…..different side, price. Maybe we just didn’t want to hear it so much. The chips were as fresh and crispy as the shells, and free as were the refills (some places actually charge for chips!). The salsa has a mild heat to it, but a bit too much cumin for my liking. It nearly overwhelmed the other flavors. Alas, it was lunch time during the week, so not beer, but their selection looked inviting. With its cantina and live music nightly, I need to come back.
Walking into Serranos reminded me of the Tony Roma’s rib house that used to occupy the space not that long ago, but it could have been Serranos’ mesquite fired grill adding to the aroma.
Regardless, their tacos were pretty decent. Two large tacos sitting in a bed of lettuce and tomato, stuffed with meat, hard to beat. The salsa was great; just the right amount of heat and chopped cilantro to add a fresh flavor.
The service was a bit on the slow side and since they weren’t very crowded, I would have expected better. The beer selection was typical, but they serve it with a small 4 ounce glass, which for some reason I find to be an enjoyable way to imbibe one’sbeer.
I had to try another one. Just a couple blocks away from the Taco Shack on Medical Parkway, I found a completely different looking one on North Lamar across from Central Market. While the first was rather small and eclectic, this one looks pretty much like a normal fast food place. The tacos however were identical in construction. One mistake here, they wrapped them in foil together. The added heat steamed off more juice, making them both a bit soggy. Otherwise, for a 99 cent taco, tough to beat.
The taco is the perfect food. All nutritionist will tell you to eat a well balanced variety of foods and use the food pyramid as a guide. Even the United States Government agrees with that.
To refresh your memory, the food pyramid starts wide at the bottom with grains, then next is nearly equal parts of veggies and fruit, then meat and dairy and at the pointed top, a sparing amount of oil and sweets.
The taco is all of these. -The shell is coarse ground corn taking care of your body’s need for grain products. Better still, it’s “whole grain”. -Tomatoes are really a fruit and lettuce is the vegetable, and a good source of "ruffage" which everyone will tell you to have in your diet. -Of course meat is meat and cheese is obviously dairy. Even if it's goat cheese. -Tasty ground meat will always have a little fat or oil. With properly drained meat, a little fat is what you should get.
There you go, the perfect food. Except for the sweet, so you can complete your meal with a Mexican praline or one of those little green and white mints.
Next time you munching down a taco, feel good about yourself. You're living healthy!
One of six family owned restaurants, the Taco Shack, wedged into a corner on Medical Parkway with one picnic table outside, is truly a to-go only place. Six adults inside and the place is packed, but what tacos! Wrapped in foil to keep them warm and with two little containers of salsa, these are some of the best little tacos you’ll find. Not heavy on the veggies, they were stuffed with finely grated cheddar and Monterey Jack and well drained meat. By the time I got to my second taco, it was a little soggy. Being wrapped in foil, it was due to a little fat sweating out of the meat. Still good. No beer, that’s expected for a to-go place (TABC rules and all), but the service was friendly and my tacos were out in undertwo minutes. The stars say it all.
The Texican at Lakeline was my first blog, but with this experience, I had to write another. I've been cooking a lot at home lately, so the other night my daughter surprised me with my favorite meal…..two tacos. She stopped by the Texican and picked up a take-out order. What a surprise and what a thoughtful daughter. The meal came neatly packed in the typical Styrofoam take-out container and unassembled! No worries about ending up with soggy tacos by the time you get home; I could put them together any way I liked. There was an abundance of lettuce, tomato, cheese, and beef. Enough that I could actually make three tacos! The convenient to-go bag was topped off with a large bag of their crispy chips and a huge container of Texican’s spicy salsa. A cold Pacifico out of the frig, and I was good-to-go. Texican has brought take-out to a higher plane and it was really a nice experience. Try it.
Tucked away in a corner at 29 Doors shopping center, Santa Rita is a friendly enough of a restaurant, but if their tacos don’t get better, they’ll go the way of Tres Amigos, the restaurant they replaced. My usual order came out extremely quickly, unfortunately too quickly. Not much lettuce, I don’t recall any tomato, and I had to search for the cheese. But it was the meat that did it in. The texture was almost too creamy to be ground beef. It was like they ground it down into a flavorless mush. At least the beer was cold and the lime fresh. I heard the owner is a nice guy and does some great catering, but if these are his normal tacos it'll be no more Santa Rita for me. I miss Tres Amigos.
One can expect Texas to have great Mexican food and Austin Texas to have an abundance of eclectic Tex-Mex restaurants. I’ve always hated long menus and straining through the fine type many have. So in Mexican restaurants, I found the solution and that was to just order two tacos, al la carte, no beans, no rice. Always crispy, always corn tortillas, mostly beef.....good Tex-Mex! If they offer you flour tortillas, you’re getting burritos.
You can’t go wrong with tacos. They will define a Mexican eatery. Good tacos, everything else is good too.
I live in Austin Texas, this is where I eat
: The more somberos the better the tacos. : The more pepppers the better the salsa, not just in 'heat' but in flavor as well. : Approximate price per pair (One dollar sign per dollar).
Share your experience
Share your taco experiences. Remember, two tacos, however you like them. Write up something yourself or just let me know what you thought of the food, the salsa, the service, the cost.
: The more somberos the better the tacos.
: The more pepppers the better the salsa, not just in 'heat' but in flavor as well.
: Approximate price per pair (One dollar sign per dollar).
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