Los Catrachos y El Grupo Come-Tacos (Houston Taco Tour)

About a month ago, mi amiguita y gran photo genius, Penny de los Santos came up with a great idea - doing a Houston Taco Tour! She had already been on some in the ATX con El Mero Mero Taquero (me) so I think she got the taco bug. So what did we do? We started pumping it up and recruited mas food bloggers (Addie, Marshall, Jam, Nelson de Austin y Alison & Katharine de Houston) to go to H-town with us. I of course called on Los Catrachos de Houston, Juan Carlos y Geraldina Reina. By the way, Catrachos = Hondurenos and for a good time, call Juan Carlos y Gera!

Los Catrachos: Juan Carlos y Gera

I started the day crudo and was not feeling so well. Instead of tacos, I was totally craving menudo but I kept it strong since we did make the 2.5 hour trek to Houston. We hit up 6 spots in this tour but only 2 mibbe 3 are worth mentioning; plus we were side tracked by a visit to El Campero which was basically KFC repackaged, taken to Central America and brought back to the States as Latin American fried chicken. Yeah, I wasn't feeling this Campero stop.

The 4th stop on the taco tour was this truck parked in a do-it-yourself car wash. Y'know the kind that takes your quarters and you try to hurry your ass up & wash your car in under 5 bucks! I had a good feeling about this trockita aka El Ultimo Taco; mibbe it was the Tecate that Juan Carlos handed me under the hot sun while I waited for my taco? Si, mibbe! I ended up ordering a fajita taco on a corn tortilla con jalapeños y cebollitas asadas. Sure enough, it was right up my alley. The beef was smokey & tender; the steaming tortilla embraced the carne & green salsa and the jalapeños y grilled onions gave it a great finish. Not only did the taco almost cure my hangover but hanging with good peeps and drinking beer at the car wash just made me feel right at home...ese!

Hanging at the Car Wash!

Addie y Ian posing it up!

Stop #5: This place reminded me of old school joints in MX - the type of places that keep you there for hours and hours just by adding little perks - y'know, free tequila, free taquitos y musicos! That's exactly what El Hidalguense did to us. Well, it really didn't keep us there for hours but we could of spent hours in that place if we weren't on a taco mission that day. I still remember the free tequila shots - who am I to say no to shots in tiny plastic cups! As you can tell, the atmosphere was way more memorable than the tacos. So I'll skip the tacos. Although I am for sure going back to El Hidalguense; by the time I get my 3rd round of tequila and beers, the tacos will probably taste great!

Musicos doin' some Son Jarocho

Final stop was Canino's Food Market but by then we were all tired and our bellies were full of tacos. So we ended up shopping for some good mercado veggies and headed back to Austin.

Okay, so I lied; there was only one place worth mentioning and that was El Ultimo Taco. Next time you're in Houston, go there cuz they good! Just ask Juan Carlos!


Until the next taco tour...Stay hungry, my friends.

elmundodemando

P.S. If you want to check out the "real" Houston Taco Tour reviews, check out Addie's Relish Austin and Marshall's Eat This Lens blogs.