Los Jalisciences #2

I try not to buy too many meals out during the week. Those little debit charges add up and it's more healthy and satisfying to eat at home. This week though the weekend was busy enough to keep me from grocery shopping and I'm planning an early weekend get-away to Fredericksburg on Friday, so I haven't bothered to plan a week's worth of meals. Well, whatever the justification, I had no milk for my coffee this morning and I bought breakfast tacos out.

Ever since Aurora mentioned it, I've been meaning to try Los Jalisciences #2. I have no idea where Los Jalisciences #1 is, but #2 sits right off of 290 East at the I-35/290 split between the Cameron and Berkman exits. Sits, did I say? Perches? Roosts? Squats like a strange, alien vessel? It's quite the architectural anomaly, as you can see from Robby Virus' excellent photograph, borrowed from his flickr account, below:



Yes, Los Jalisciences #2 is connected to an Econolodge, and while I wouldn't call my breakfast either free or high speed, it was pretty cheap and relatively quick. I only paid $2.63 for my tacos and they were ready in a white paper bag within five minutes. Big kudos for having 99-cent tacos in the mornings, though I believe I saw a sign stating that deal only lasts until noon. They also had a killer looking jukebox.

I should've taken my own pictures in and around the building, but as I was the only person there at that hour of the morning, I would've felt like a big weirdo. So, instead I quickly ordered two huevos a la mexicana tacos (a quick litmus test for breakfast taco authenticity, which Jali passed) with queso (my preference) and took them back to my office.

I remembered that Aurora had suggested Los Jalisciences, but what I should've remembered was the way she then clicked her tongue and shook her head and announced that their tacos were too soggy and that she doesn't like soggy tacos. Who does? This taco/economic-lodging fusion is less than a mile from my place of work, but by the time I got my freshly made tacos to go and took them up to my office (a full five-minutes at most), they looked like this when I opened them up:



Now, I know that food taken to-go is not necessarily supposed to look like food presented to you for eating at a restaurant, and I know that tacos are especially hard to make pretty to-go, but this was a soggy, soggy, greasy, soggy mess. I'd like to draw your attention to the shininess of the soggy paper and the discoloration of the tortilla (a side-effect of the aforementioned sogginess). Of course I still ate them and they tasted good even though they required about twice the usual number of napkins. The included to-go salsa selection was above and beyond, but I still can't get over what a mess these tacos were.

Final analysis: cool building, weird Econo-lodge connection, good prices, bad restrictions on breakfast, nice jukebox, tasty salsa, waterlogged tacos that should come with taco bib. Overall an odd experience and not a great taco.

Tacos Are for Sharing and Dia de Los Muertos

When I started work at my current job about two months ago, I made friends quickly with the remarkable Aurora, custodian, grandmother, and Spanish-tutor. She pleasantly tolerates my imperfect usage of her language, jokes that she will bring me a pillow and blanket so that I can camp out under my desk at night, and one time even stopped into the office to give me a shoulder massage while I sat doing mind-numbing data entry for grant compliance.

Our friendship hit a rocky patch over a linguistic misunderstanding in which she, reading a religious tract, joked that I was Satan's friend (I still can't really figure out where that one came from). In a amiable tone, I called her what my Spanish-English dictionary had clearly taught me was the word for rude: maleducada. Aurora immediately looked sad and offended and I felt like a jerk. I feel like both of our jokes landed a little harder than intended out of cultural context, but we got past it somehow and on Thursday, she brought me tacos!

I'd asked Aurora a few weeks back where the best places to get breakfast tacos was and she suggested Los Jaliscienses which I will still have to try, but said there was a place she liked even better. She claimed she couldn't remember the name, but the bag she brought me was from La Michocana. La Michocana actually has six locations around Austin, but as they advertise themselves primarily as a meat market, I've never bothered to go in. Yes, I'm a vegetarian, and Aurora brought me three kinds of veggie tacos: papas a la mexicana, huevos a la mexicana, and huevos con papa.

I'm not going to rate La Michocana at this time because I didn't get an ideal taco eating experience. Aurora brought them into work and I then waited for my co-worker Amanda because half of the tacos were for her as well. That day we had a evening event at work that quickly ate up our day, so much so that Amanda ended up not even eating her tacos (I've never been that distracted.) I reheated mine and ate them while Amanda was running errands... then I reheated Amanda's and ate them the next day while speculating on whether the unrefrigerated eggs would make me sick or not (they didn't). The papas a la mexicana were really tasty, surprising me since I would probably die without my egg intake. A business trip to La Michocana is pending.

Yesterday was the Viva La Vida Festival put on by the Mexi-Arte Museum here in Austin. My girlfriend and I decided that this was a nice moment to celebrate my moving to Austin and hosted an apartment warming to coincide with the Day of the Dead/Dia de Los Muertos festivities.

Perhaps the victim of too few breakfast tacos?

Dia de Los Muertos themed cupcakes.

That Austin throws such a passionate Dia de Los Muertos celebration warms my heart. This is the kind of fusion I came to love in my time of living on the border and what I am grateful for being able to learn from every day.

Midnight at Magnolia Café

I swear, it wasn't the plan to dive so quickly into evaluating the breakfast tacos of beloved Austin icons like Magnolia Café. I'd meant to spend a while thinking and writing about tacos, coming up with detailed criteria and developing a complex rating system... and maybe starting my evaluations with a few taco trucks or less known taquerias before diving right in... but I went to dinner last night with three friends who know I've started this blog and know that I plan to start evaluating breakfast tacos around Austin and the breakfast tacos on the menu just looked so damn good.

After work last night, my colleague Amanda invited me to The Independent for their weekly poetry slam. Amanda and I work at a non-profit that runs after-school programming, so our busiest hours are between 3:00 and 8:00PM. The show started at about 8:30 and by the time we got out at 10:30 eating was long overdue. Amanda suggested Magnolia for their outrageously tasty Mag Queso. Magnolia's Mag Queso costs $6.95 and is black beans, queso, avacado, and pico de gallo in a really healthy serving... or is that unhealthy?

I considered the array of food on a menu with lots of excellent looking options, but my friends suggested if I was serious about this breakfast taco thing, it was time to get started. There was some peer pressure involved, but it doesn't take much to push me in that direction. I ordered the Three Alarm Taco. Okay, I ordered two of them.


Two Three Alarm Tacos come on a plate at Magnolia for $6.25 and consist of scrambled eggs, potatoes, cheddar and jack cheeses, and jalapeños, with a slightly spicy chipotle sauce and flour tortillas. And there's clearly about a ton of all of it... I wondered if they didn't accidentally give me three tacos with only two tortillas.

The primary categories I've established for rating tacos consist of the three main parts: tortilla, contents, and salsa. I've also established three secondary categories for when I'm rating a restaurant or taqueria overall and not simply the taco. These are: ambiance, salsa bar and other condiments, and beverages. Magnolia was NA in two of these secondary categories as they don't have a salsa bar (salsa comes on the side) and I ordered water. In ambiance, I unhesitatingly gave them a 5 out of 5. This place has a smattering of folk-artsy cuteness like the painted wooden pterodactyls swinging from the ceiling, and all the charm of a down home picnic. I think my family actually had this tablecloth packed away for weenie roasts and backyard cookouts.

But down to the serious business of the Three Alarm Tacos. I hate to start with the lowest point, but the tortilla is at the top of my scorecard. I don't really have anything good to say about Magnolia's tortillas except that they carried the contents of the taco from my plate to my mouth and they didn't taste bad. Out of 5, I gave them 2. The contents of the taco were really tasty. The eggs and potatoes were covered in a spicy chipotle sauce and there were giant, in fact somewhat intimidating, chunks of jalapeño. Oddly the cheese was all melted in the crease of the tortilla and not spread throughout or sprinkled on top... for contents, I gave them 4. Finally, the salsa was fine... just, fine. Between the chipotle sauce and the salsa, there was a nice kick to the meal, but the salsa itself was mostly generic.

Plus, I factored in an additional five as a bonus for having a rocking 'round the clock breakfast menu. 24-hours of breakfast = awesome. All told, Magnolia Cafe added up and averaged out earned a 3.8 out of 5 for their Three Alarm Tacos. Solid.

Toast Your Own Tortilla

Anytime I start discussing what the criteria should be for an excellent breakfast taco experience, one thing always comes up first: tortilla quality. Some people feel passionately about corn tortillas, the original Mexican tortillas, but they've never really done it for me. Corn tortillas tear and break, they have a sort of rubbery texture, and they just don't taste as good as flour tortillas. Now, I know fresh corn tortillas right off your abuelita's stove with a nice patty of butter on them are hard to beat, but most of us don't often get a corn tortilla like that.

The history of the flour tortilla is pretty simple. So, the indigenous people of what is today Mexico and the southwest United States were once upon a time making these toasted circles of flattened cornmeal when the Spaniards showed up and turned them onto wheat. The Spaniards also, unknowingly, turned them onto smallpox and the rest is western civilization history... but I actually think the flour tortilla was a pretty good idea. A great idea, really, and when done right, they're also the perfect vehicle for delivering the contents of your breakfast taco to your satisfied stomach via a pleasant scenic route across your tastebuds.

The taquerias I visit will definitely be evaluated on the quality of their tortillas. They should be light, not chewy, not soggy, and not burnt. They should be fluffy, almost flaky. They should have a pleasant flavor, maybe a slight taste of butter, but no taste of lard at all. I realize this is a lot to ask... especially if you're making your tacos at home, but it is possible to get a great tasting tortilla at home with minimal effort.

At most grocery stores, at least in Texas, you can find Guerrero's Tortillas de Harina - Fresqui-Ricas (which is an awesome made-up word, and trademarked). They're fresh, uncooked flour tortillas that you toast on the stove yourself.


It is a tiny bit more work than just tossing pre-cooked tortillas in the microwave, but the difference in taste and texture is truly worth the extra effort. On a medium heat skillet or griddle at about a minute on each side, your tortilla should start puffing up and turning a tasty golden brown (teapot not required for successful toasting).

Tacos Are for Lupperfest

Carolyn left a reader comment that brings up a very good point. While it's true that the title of this blogging adventure is Tacos Are for Breakfast, I've already made a second important leap in logic in even beginning to write this blog that I need readers to make with me. That is this: breakfast is for dinner.

Dinner, or eating... just, whenever.

I'm a person who often gets completely absorbed in projects at work and forgets to eat, or waits to run to the bathroom until I'm on the verge of wetting my pants. There are no prescribed mealtimes. Meals are often taken after I've reached a point near delirium or become so irritable that no one wants to sit next to me anymore. Then they're taken and taken with gusto.

My friend Matt, when he was working as a full-time volunteer for over a year, adopted this style of eating out of necessity when three meals a day became too expensive. He likened it to a snake swallowing its prey in one go and then digesting it over a long period of time, in Matt's case, about 24-hours. He dubbed this single giant meal lupperfest.

There are few foods that are well suited for a lupperfest-style dining experience. They must be satisfying for hours afterwards, rich in protein, delicious enough to eat two-pounds of it, whatever it is. I find that the breakfast taco meets all of these requirements, perfect for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, supper, or lupperfest. There is, frankly, no time of the day or night when breakfast tacos are not appropriate dining. The taste of eggs is not affected by the hour of day in which they are served. It is not passé to eat them after 11:00AM in omelet, scramble, or taco form. If quiche is in the clear, so are tacos.

So, as I start deriving the standards for rating the restaurant tacos out there, I'd first like to establish a stiff demerit, say a 5-point deduction, for restaurants that stop serving breakfast after a certain hour of the day. Another 5-points off if that hour is before 11:00AM.

And 2-points off for nonsense like this:


Maybe there are really good reasons for an extra charge on tacos ordered after 12:00PM, but I can't for the life of me think of what they might be. In any case, until someone points them out, points off. Tacos are for always, so stand down your discriminatory additional charges.

A Serious Appreciation

It's tempting to write that I love breakfast tacos, but it's hard to ignore the chorus of well, why don't you marry breakfast tacos! already in my head. Also, starting in like that, so forcefully, with I love breakfast tacos! is cheesy and highlights a serious shortcoming in the English language with describing those things that give us some amount of joy, large or small.

It's more accurate, I believe, to say that I have a serious appreciation for breakfast tacos, bordering on downright affection.

I ate six of them today.

When I told my girlfriend that this evening her response was, "You're gross," which is clearly a matter of opinion. But this is not a popularity contest, or an eating contest, or even really about eating, though a fair amount of that will be discussed. This is about voice and finding culture, finding something that is at least in part yours because it gives you real pleasure.

I grew up in a home (with a lovely family, I should point out) where this is breakfast:



And this is a taco:



We called tortillas roll-ups and then eventually graduated to tort-tillahs. I ate my fair share of Hamburger Helper and the panoply of desserts that come recommended on the back of instant Jello products: red Jello with bananas, instant vanilla pudding with Vanilla Wafers and... bananas.

When you grow up on a steady diet of manufactured normalcy, I think it's natural to long for something different, something that seems more exotic. Besides, a north-Texas childhood meant my love of tacos was in my DNA. By the time I was ten, I knew I didn't want to spend my life in the instant pudding section of my neighborhood Kroger. I wanted to eat delicious things on crowded street corners with salsa dripping between my fingers and the radio tuned to a Ranchero station. That inclination seems perfectly natural, also.