Food 2 stars
Service 2 stars
Ambience 1 1/2 stars
1175 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-443-9468, tacocolorado.com
Hours 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 11:30 a.m.-1 a.m. Friday-Saturday; 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday
Credit cards accepted
Noise level Low
Some of the best meals I've ever eaten have consisted of corn tortillas topped with beef, pork or fish: Tacos that come slathered with salsa, christened with a squeeze of lime and typically cost less than a turn of the handle on a modern gumball machine.
Straightforward Mexican street food is hard to beat, especially when you consider the cost-to-enjoyment ratio. It's a difficult proposition, successfully repackaging and repositioning a street-food experience. Brick-and-mortar restaurants that attempt it almost always lose points on the cost/enjoyment scale.
Savvy business owners know in order to attract and keep customers they need to somehow replace the value pricing with a creative culinary twist, exceedingly stellar service and/or an inspiring dining atmosphere.
T/ACO, an urban taqueria, attempts the challenging task by offering a variety of snazzed-up street tacos. The dimly lit restaurant is small, with the open kitchen visible from the bar and dining area. A communal table with room for 10 takes up a third of the room, encouraging you to share space with fellow taco partakers. If you stretch your imagination, the serape-style wallpaper, cowhide ottomans and a collage of spaghetti-western posters assembled on the wall might give you an inkling that a bandito gunfight could potentially break out at any moment in this border town-style cantina.
Moseying up to the bar, I ordered a beer from the concise list of Mexican options. The courteous server poured me a Pacifico and left me to choose from a short menu of five starters and nine tacos.
I opted to start with guacamole ($6) served with house-fried chips; the guac was good, real darn good, vividly green, gently limed and fresh. Next, a bevy of tacos arrived on a wooden platter accompanied by a small vessel of heavenly black beans. Ever so smoky and topped with Cotija cheese, these beans, I was told, were cooked inside avocado leaves for added flavor.
Five different taco options -- carnitas, chicken, veggie, shrimp and snapper -- all came on hand-rolled but slightly under-griddled masa tortillas.
My overwhelmingly favorite taco was the pork carnitas. Crisp and tender pork pieces, diced fresh pineapple, cilantro and caramelized onion harmonized together but then sang out with an addition of fresh lime.
The chicken taco tantalized my taco-tasting buds with a chipotle marinade that had the heft of a mole and similar rich sweet notes. A creative and thoughtful vegetarian taco option featured oven-roasted spaghetti squash, raw poblano pepper slices, toasty pepitas, cilantro and red onion.
Although T/ACO's mezcal-marinated grilled shrimp taco was fresh, I found it lacking in seafood flavor, and next time, I would opt instead for one of the other meat options.
The kitchen just about nailed the red snapper fish taco, though -- zesty chipotle mayo, paper thin-sliced radish, lively shredded cabbage, scallion and red onion were exactly the toppings I'd hoped for. The only misstep to this assemblage of fish taco achievement was the slightly overcooked snapper.
If T/ACO were positioned soley as a quick service yet foodie-caliber taco joint, I could see this being a successful example of street-food sales savviness; a downtown watering hole in which to toss back a cold cerveza and scarf down a few handcrafted tacos before heading back to the office.
If you order the taco special -- two tacos and a Pacifico beer, or three tacos -- for $7.50, you can reasonably enjoy a taco snack or light lunch for about $10, including tax and tip.
However, eyeing the tequila-based cocktail menu ($11-$12 margaritas) and a la carte taco pricing ($3.50-$4.50 per taco) gives the impression that T/ACO is also hoping to capitalize on the same segment of people who frequent Centro, Aji or Zolo.
Personally, I'd be hard-pressed spending $12 on one of T/ACO's margarita concoctions, as neither the ambience nor the vibe at T/ACO warrants this type of splurge. No matter how good their T/ACO Cosmo -- a chest hair-growing dose of El Tesoro Platinum and Patron Citron with a splash of cranberry -- may be, there's no sexy, loungy space in which to sip here. The tone isn't set for the type of crowd the prices suggest T/ACO's looking to lure come sundown.
Don't get me wrong. T/ACO's tacos are G/OOD, but I'd easily need six of their modestly sized tacos for dinner. Two $ 7.50 specials (both for me) and one cocktail would be $27, before tax and tip -- and with no appetizer. That's a large pile of beans!
But, hey, if you've got some spare pesos burning a hole in your pocket, are looking for tasty tacos despite a high cost/enjoyment ratio, I say vamos, vamos ahora! For my dinero, however, I'd stick with the taco special for a light lunch and consider alternate venues for dinner and a marg.