Last Tuesday I finally paid a visit to Taco Taxi. This Monday (today) I am finally writing the review. Why did it take me so long to get to Taco Taxi? Because there are surprising number of decent taco joints here in the Twin Cities. Why did it take me so long to write this review of Taco Taxi? Because BioWare’s Mass Effect 2 for Xbox is simply too good to put down.
My plan for this week’s review was to do a combination of Taco Taxi and my first personal request from GameFly, Spiderman: Dimensions. The theme was going to be all about anticipation, and how fun it is to wait for things before you get them. I’ve clearly been wanting to get a taste of Taco Taxi for awhile now, and although I wasn’t supremely looking forward to Spiderman: Dimensions, I really love getting things in the mail, so that aspect of the game alone made me excited. Unfortunately GameFly sent us Army of Two instead, plus it didn’t show up until Friday. Although I hear it’s a pretty good game, I was anxious to dive into a review and no matter how much I love waiting for mail, I wasn’t interested in waiting the extra days to sink my teeth into something. Thoroughly indifferent about any games I could find at Blockbuster, I settled on a used copy of Mass Effect 2, and have since not missed a day of play time. But, I’ll come back to that part later.
Taco Taxi is just south of Downtown Minneapolis in an area called Midtown, which doesn’t make any sense, because it’s not mid-town. The areas of the city here are always seem like they were named by a five year old. Uptown is below downtown. The Westbank is east of the city, but west of the river. The Northeast isn’t really north east. There are sections called Dinkytown and Tangletown. This place is bonkers. Anyway, Midtown is a mostly Mexican part of town with what looks like an never ending supply of places to review at All the Tacos. It’s incredibly easy to get to by bike, because it’s located right off the Minneapolis Greenway. So you can go, eat all the tacos your heart desires, and then burn off the gnar with a nice bike ride home.
Taco Taxi is a bright yellow building that stands out on the block, and sings a lovely siren song to all taco lovers. The inside is pretty simple, with a limited menu of common and delicious eats. Warning: there is no bathroom, so make sure you hit the bathrooms before you head to Taco Taxi, and maybe don’t drink as much Jarritos as usual.
Their taco offerings included: asada (steak), pastor (marinated pork), lengua (tongue), birra (goat), carnitas (braised pork), cabeza (beef head), and pollo (chicken). I decided to visit the edge, but not go all the way by having steak, tongue, and goat tacos. I’m not sure that I’ll ever be able to try beef head anything, but who knows, maybe I’ll fucking lose my mind with tacos and go all the way some day.
To balance the meal I also ordered a side of their refried beans, which were tops. Really good stuff.
Of the three tacos I’ve got the say that the old standby, steak, was definitely the most flavorful, followed by the goat, which had some awesome, awesome, awesome sauce on it. I was bummed that I didn’t ask the woman at the counter about the sauce, or at least get some more of it for my other tacos. Now, when I ordered the tacos I was convinced that I’d never eaten goat before, but I’ve eaten a lot of stuff in my life, and definitely more than my fair share of meats so I’m sure some goat has crept in there. Unfortunately the flavor of the goat wasn’t familiar or unfamiliar to my taste buds. It had a subtle flavor, like dark chicken meat that’s been cooked a little too long. It was good, but again, it was the sauce that totally made it.
I was pretty disappointed in the tacos de lengua. I’d had such a good experience at Barrio with their tongue tacos, and recently I had read about Mary’s good luck at Tehuitzingo, so I was sure they were going to be delicious. Unfortunately they were a little dry and not very flavorful, but they weren’t terrible. The tongue tacos being a let down got me thinking, though. Not every place is consistent, and not ever piece of meat that gets shipped to a location is the same as the one before it. So, I plan on going back to Taco Taxi for a second round, because I’ve heard so many awesome things about the place. I’d also like to try some of their other non-taco items.
My friend Rocky, who went with me to Taco Taxi had this to add:
“So yeah, as guest reviewer or whatever, I would like to say that the chicken taco was delicious, considering it was a “boring” meat, the beans and rice were quite better than I expected and the sopas, while not as good as I remember, were still enjoyable, because they were the closest I could get to puffy tacos without being in Austin, TX. There’s something about fried masa that really makes me happy.”
What are puffy tacos? Evidentially the Tex-Mex treat.
Anyone have a tip on where to get these in the Twin Cities? Is it even possible? The thought of them is making me so hungry. Shit.
Taco Taxi
1511 East Lake Street, Minneapolis
Price: Moderate
Taste: Tasty
In the end Taco Taxi was a place I though I’d love, but ended up just being OK with. Conversely, in the case of Mass Effect 2, I thought I’d hate it, but I ended up falling in love with it. I should have known, as it had been described to me as “Fallout 3, but in space.” Normally I’m not super keen on hard sci-fi, but this game looks incredible, and the story is pretty wonderful.
The drawbacks are few, but important:
1) Because it is the second in what looks like might be a trilogy, the game assumes you are familiar with the controls, and doesn’t bother with too much of the initial training wheel segments. This is a problem because I ended up dying a ton during the first few ambushed combat sequences while trying to figure out, through trial and error, how to combine my powers with my teammates’.
Also, I had to fucking Google “How do I vault over barriers in Mass Effect 2?” Ugh.
2) I bought the game used for $20, but then had to pay (or, my husband paid) another $20 just to get a fresh code for the Cerberus Network. Why even bother buying it used? Jerks.
Other than that, the game is incredible. I haven’t finished it yet (it’s a two-disc game, for the love of god), but I’ll keep the blog updated with if it gets better or worse.