Adventures in Taco-Land

Last weekend, I relaxed. This weekend, I ate.

C & I grew up in New Braunfels, TX, a world full of amazing tacos. We satisfied our cravings every Saturday morning with tacos from Los Gallos through our entire Junior & Senior year of high school. To this day, every time we go "home" it is mandatory that breakfast tacos are had in some form or fashion. (I even have Los Gallos' phone number still programed in my phone. Six years after I lived in New Braunfels.)

When me moved to Bryan, TX, the quckie, but awesome, breakfast taco we'd come to rely on to start our weekend was no where to be found. And for six years, we've been complaining about it. Until this weekend.

At the insistence of a few life-long Bryan residents, we decided to wake up Saturday morning with a mission: to find the best breakfast tacos in town. And so we woke up Saturday morning (ignoring the massive amounts of garage sales) & started driving.

We stopped at four places altogether, getting a taco at each place. We rated each location on 5 categories:

(1) Service
(2) Quality of Tortilla
(3) Quality of Hot Sauce
(4) Overall Taco
(5) Price

Three of the places came highly recommended by others, and one was just a spur-of-the-moment turn into a convenient store with "Taquiera" written on its sign. I employed an "equal grounds" controlled experiment, getting only a plain bean & cheese taco at each place, while C employed a more diverse sampling.

We discovered long drive through lines at La Familia (with tacos almost twice the price as the other places), and a Spanish-speaking-only stand at Las Mexicanas. Pictures of dead goats at La Botana, and pinata-lined walls at Tienda mi Ranchito.

The best taco of the day was the Picadillo at Las Mexicanas - but a return visit for fajita tacos that night made us realize that while no one was rude to us, we weren't really welcome. La Familia was over-priced, and had soggy tortillas; and La Botana was good, but not great.

In the end, Tienda mi Ranchito won the taste test. Tucked away inside of a dirty convenient store (which doesn't sell Dr. Pepper), the service was polite & quick, the toritllas perfectly grilled, and the salsa the best of the day. To make sure we had made the right choice, C went back to collect a larger sampling of tacos Sunday morning -- and we found the best Chorizo & Egg taco either of us had ever eaten.

Taco Challenge 2012: Complete.

Now excuse me while I hit the gym....

Have you found a good local place lately?

Hope you had a great weekend!

{Happy Monday}

PS - A few more days to enter the giveaway!