When you can’t make your own
Words and photos by Curtis Comeau
Like many of you, I took up cooking as a hobby over the past two years. One of the areas I focused on was how to make different street-style tacos. I ended up sourcing ingredients locally—El Mercado corn tortillas, La Patrona taco sauces and fresh ingredients like pork shoulder and beef cuts from Acme or Real Deal Meats.
However, I realized that, generally, you have to make a lot when making tacos. It’s time consuming, and you end up with a lot of taco filling. When making barbacoa, you can’t just make enough for four or six tacos; it’s more like five pounds of beef. So, you end up pretty much eating barbacoa for lunch and dinner seven nights a week.
While making street tacos at home is fun, sometimes you just want to eat four freshly made tacos and go on about your day. Now I have learned to balance my street taco-making addiction in favour of skipping the mess and choose to eat out at some of Edmonton’s best taco joints for specialty tacos.
Tacos de Lengua (beef/bison tongue), 3 Amigos
Let’s face it; some cuts of meat are challenging to get and trickier to cook. Tasty lengua tacos are made with traditionally seasoned beef tongue braised over a long period. However, bison tongue is becoming more popular in Canada. Making lengua at home is fraught with challenges; tongue is hard to find and high skills are needed to braise it to perfection. And beef tongues are massive. Do you want to be eating lengua tongue all week long? Being an amateur cook, tackling braising a beef tongue is too outside the box for me. It’s best to head over to 3 Amigos and let them serve you an order of three perfectly cooked lengua tacos.
Al Pastor Tacos, Huma
Al pastor means shepherd style, which is slow-roasting ancho-marinated pork on a vertical spit. Once cooked, pieces are shaved off the spit and served on a corn tortilla with cilantro, onions and grilled pineapple. Vertical spit-roasting pork for the pastor at home, while not impossible, is not an easy feat. I know, I tried, so now, when I feel like hearty authentic El Pastor tacos, Huma is my stop.
Pescado Tacos, Calle Mexico
Fish tacos are often one of the most ordered items from a Mexican restaurant. After a few attempts, I understand that making fish tacos at home is messy and time-consuming. Deep frying an excellent fresh cut of fish is fine, but the cleaning up is not so much fun. Calle Mexico makes a beautiful pescado tacos trio; deep-fried cod topped with chipotle mayo, lettuce and pico de gallo salsa. “Our fish tacos are 100 per cent gluten-free, we don’t use flour to batter our cod, and of course, the tortillas are 100 per cent corn,” says owner Juan Talango. When I want to skip the mess, I visit Calle Mexico.
Vegetarian (vegan) tacos, Frida Urban Taqueria
I am not a vegetarian, but at times I do want to eat a little cleaner, so when I crave tacos and want someone who knows how to make vegetables taste amazing and in taco form, Frida is my stop. They have four vegetarian tacos to choose from—papas con frijoles, camote, calabaza and champinion. My personal favourites are the camote—sweet potatoes and kale with a salsa verde. All the vegetarian tacos come with the option of adding queso fresco.
Carnitas, Argyll Foods
Carnitas are my absolute favourite taco. Originally from Michoacán, they are now a savoury staple across Mexico. However, I also learned that they are made by braising a heavily marbled section of pork shoulder, and if you want more flavour, add 12 oz bacon while braising the shoulder. Yeah, braise a fatty cut of meat with more fat. No wonder carnitas are simply incredible. To avoid eating five pounds of savoury meat every day because one is left with so much meat, I decided it’s best to eat carnitas out rather than making them at home.
The taco counter in the back of Argyll Foods has become my go-to when I want grab ’n go carnitas. Theirs are on a corn tortilla with diced white onion and cilantro with a wedge of lime. Simple, classic and take-out only. They serve just enough that when they run out for the day, that’s it. If you plan on visiting Argyll Foods on a Saturday, make sure you get there no later than midday because this hidden taco counter is well known in the Edmonton Latin community, and they do run out if you wait too long.