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Quite Possibly, the Most Interesting Taco Stand Within Spitting Distance of the Parkit Market
Stay Law Reviewersie, My Friends!
From the co-founder of Uncle Julio’s comes Rusty Taco, a squeaky clean, SMU-area – hey, wait! Where are you going? Come back! You didn’t even skip down to the end to see how many gavels it got! What turned you off more, the idea of another Uncle Julio’s or your fear of Urbandictionary.com’s definition of “Rusty Taco?” We hear ya – we had the same thoughts, too.
But you know what? It has a place in our little Audi-fied world. Think of Rusty Taco as your taco answer to the burrito question: Where else but Chipotle can I look cool, eat well, and pay a premium price for something I could probably get cheaper and quicker down on Colorado Boulevard?
The former gas station has that industrial chic look that Chipotle has mastered so well and the similar open kitchen to-boot. But instead of burritos, it specializes in gorditas – kidding! Just seeing if you were paying attention. The taco-based menu includes nine varieties of non-breakfast tacos and four varieties of breakfast tacos, all for the moderately low but still suspiciously even price of $2.00 each. Rusty Taco, or Rus, as Clark Griswold would say, also serves $5.00 margaritas and beer in the $2.50-$3.50 range. “Don’t tell your mom about the beer, Rus.” Add in $1.00 chips and salsa and $3.00 queso and guacamole and you’ve got a complete menu.
Just like at Uncle Julio’s, Rusty Taco makes a big deal out of the fact that their tortillas are homemade, but close your eyes and you probably won’t notice the difference (you also won’t be able to drive home without opening them again). They also play up the fact that the tacos are handmade, but, personally, we’d be more impressed if they were created by an army of cyborgs bent on human domination since that would probably give Rusty Taco more leverage with the TABC.
A mid-morning run for breakfast tacos on one Saturday morning showed how popular ol’ Rus’ tacos are becoming, as we were greeted with a line out the door and into the parking lot. The line to order at the counter moved achingly slow at first but eventually sped up when a second cashier was added. The open kitchen was extremely busy with taco chefs, Rusty himself and who we believe was Mrs. Rusty all moving quickly around each other in a deft display of makethetacosasfastasyoucanholycrapthere’salineoutthedoorandwe’reoutofchips!
At long last we had breakfast tacos – sweet, sweet breakfast tacos – to go with the decent bottomless cups of coffee. We sampled the potato, egg and cheese; choizo, egg and cheese; and jalapeño sausage, egg and cheese tacos. All were adequate and satisfied our craving, but to be frank – good guy, that Frank – they weren’t wait-in-a-long-line-into-the-parking-lot-while-desperate-for-coffee good. The ingredients all were fresh, and for $2.00 the tacos were adequately sized. Our major complaint was that the jalapeño sausage was of the prepackaged supermarket variety and had no spicy kick.
At lunchtime, we ran into the same long line and weren’t able to stick around and enjoy the newly-refurbished-Texaco atmosphere. We were able to try the picadillo and the fish tacos. The picadillo taco was filled with ground beef and potatoes, but it didn’t quite have the seasoning kick that we like. The fish taco had a nice balance of grilled fish, cilantro, cabbage and crema. On this trip, we also tried the chips and salsa. We got plenty of the right kind of restaurant-greasy chips with zesty-but-not-overly-spicy salsa. Not a bad deal for a buck.
So, on our Clark W. Griswold National Lampoon’s Vacation five-gavel-scale, where five gavels is Clark’s heart-to-heart with Roy Walley (“Roy, could you imagine if you had driven all the way to Florida and it was closed?”) and one gavel is Hamburger Helper with “real tomato ketchup,” we give Rusty Taco two-and-three-quarters gavels, or a real gun, “a Magnum P.I.”
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