Livin’ On Taco 🌮 Time...
Talk about a cool job!
Here’s a “report” from 2014 from Texas Monthly’s Bar-B-Que Editor. Everything eventually comes full circle. 
Great read. Thank you for posting!
Two thoughts from Jose Ralat that reveal his intellect and sensitivity:
I’ve only lived in Texas for ten years, and I’m still not calling myself a Texan, but I’ve been entrenched in this little world for a while now, and I’ve been fortunate enough to tell these stories—not just the stories of the tacos but of the people who make them. I do this job at their pleasure, and I feel welcomed as one of them.<<
But I think that tacos are more accessible than barbecue. You can have three Mexican-food businesses in one strip mall, but you could never do that with barbecue. People make barbecue a destination event; tacos are what we eat every day.<<
People NOW make que a destination event.
Only recently has this become the norm;
previously it was more everyday fare like hamburger joints.
Mexican and bbq pretty much constituted
the limits of “ethnic “ foods when I was younger and still in the center of the country.
IMHO, there is as much to observe, taste and critique in a taco truck’s output as in a fine dining house. Sometimes it is more difficult to describe differences in things, textures and tastes, product quality, cook’s sensibilities, when plates are very similar than when they differ greatly from each other.
FWIW, yesterday afternoon we stopped for an early dinner at a truck we had previously loved. Service /attention to detail was vastly different from our previous visits, as was construction and garnish. What would the taco editor have said about our polar experiences?
I heard an interview with him today on NPR!
What we need at Texas Monthly is a “Square Fish Editor” and I hereby nominate our own @jcostiones as the obvious, (and only) choice for the position.
Do I hear a second?
How about “Margarita Editor”, Lambsy?
Sheesh. As the OP noted, “What…next”?
Burritos are tacos.
I guess but I won’t eat the things, they’re not even Tex-Mex they migrated here from California and NW Mexico.
Growing up in SE Texas in the 60’s and 70’s they weren’t on the menu and I recently had my first and only one, a freebie from a local burrito chain, Freebird’s.
I feel cramming a bunch of rice and beans and whatever else in a giant tortilla unappetizing to say the least, my opinion.
In defense of burritos, they originated as an all in one lunch food, sort of like pasties in Michigan . So the legend says, anyway.
BTW, no rice in San Diego burros, not sure about LA.
And usually whole beans rather than refried.
http://www.sfweekly.com/dining/from-the-vaults-the-history-of-the-burrito-in-san-francisco/amp/
I’ll take that job.
Just got back from the Gulf Coast for three days and I’ve got the maintenance guy saddling up my pony for a ride to Luby’s for said fish, can’t get enough. Yes we all ride horses down here, there are even special horse lanes on the billions of miles of Houston freeways.
Luby’s Gulf Freeway has all you an eat on weekends, we’ve done it a couple of times and it seems like a good idea at the time but…
The Wifeacita may fight Lambsy for margarita editor, I suggest a drink off at El Tiempo Washington Ave. loser buys. I’ll bring the covered wagon and we can dump the carnage, I mean contestants in the back and be done with them.
It’s obvious, oyster editor.
No rice in LA burritos, at least when I lived there a long time ago. I’m also getting tired of rice in Bay Area burritos, too much starch all at once.
My take on a burrito: rice, beans & flour tortillas too much you say? add some crema, cheese & guacamole to the mix and its no wonder I love… tacos. If a burrito is a taco then I must be wrong. But I don’t want all that stuff on my taco.
InRe: Burritos
Actually they were showing up in the mid to late 70’s as we used to survive on them during several part time summer jobs in high school. Pick 'em up in any convenience store and throw 'em in the convenient on site microwave oven; (button 3 as I recall). Along with a quart of lime Gatorade and I was good for another 5 or 6 hours.
I still make them pretty regularly. Good use of leftover pintos or black beans. Sometimes with rice, sometimes without. Proteins and accoutrements as scrounged in the fridge.
As promised yesterday hit Luby’s and got two fresh, hot hunks of fish, just perfect.
Editor’s inside note, you can get to go portions of that insanely good tartar sauce at the salad area, just ask and they’ll give you pretty much all you want.
Unless of course it’s the burrito supreme from Taco Bell, which is the only burrito I’ve ever had. I remember most fondly the Frito Burrito Supreme.
I think his opinion that burritos are tacos is just a function of his preference for tacos (so he sees burritos as subordinate, rather than their own thing). The quote that leapt out at me:
I don’t understand why you would want to eat something that big in one sitting.
What is this guy, from Mars? Why on earth would anyone not want to eat anything that big in one sitting? 
