This tiny little taqueria at 1636 Queen Street East. My friend picked it and I was sceptical because Toronto doesn’t do Mexican well often. Sorry but there I said it. Don’t at me with your fave Mexican place. I’m just saying that real well made Mexican is too rare hereabouts.
This place though. Beautiful tacos, soft corn shells (two of them) wrapped around slow cooked meats. Top it yourself at an outstanding little bar of amazing salsas and other toppings. I know that sounds strange but trust the process. These homemade salsas are so good. They’re the star of the place.
The man working there said that it’s run by someone who teaches at George Brown culinary school and is staffed by culinary students.
In my opinion this place deserves to be busy. If you try it let me know what you think.
We finally tried them (a year later). Overall pretty good and we’d happily return to try more. Their al pastor was supposed to be one of their best, but it was a bit on the dry side, perhaps because of not enough turnover, so it was drying out on the spit. Its flavour was good though. The suadero was the best option, moist, fall-apart, richly flavoured brisket The fish taco featured fried haddock, which was a bit too salty and the fish was clearly frozen. As mentioned, the salsas are all great. We particularly liked the morita one with peanuts. Next time we’ll have the suadero again, try the pork shoulder, and also try some of the vegetable ones.
There is a taco shop called El Pastorcito with at least 3 locations that I have not tried yet, which some ppl on Reddit have recommended. I plan to try the Kensington location. Bloor St location didn’t look quite as appealing as the Kensington location so I didn’t go in when I walked by yesterday.
My most recent order of pastor was at the Gus Tacos location in Kensington. Pineapple underripe, and not much of it. I preferred their carnitas.
I don’t know that I gave had excellent al pastor in Toronto yet. I was enjoying it at El Tromp circa 2010-2018, and I enjoyed it at Itacate in 2019.
