snack: potato y poblano taco
drink: jarritos toronja
when it comes to food, i often go through phases. over the past year or so, i've gone through a dumpling phase, a sushi phase, a stir-fry phase & a burger phase. basically, during these phases, whenever i eat out i try to get that type of food & whenever i'm at home cooking, i'm trying to replicate my favorite dishes from when i eat out. these days i'm knee-deep in a taco phase, or what a trained pyschologist may describe as a taco "fixation." i always have a bag of corn tortillas in the fridge & a few limes at the ready. when i stayed in astoria this past weekend watching the pooches, i made a point to go to el rey del taco truck. for the last three weeks, i haven't gone more than two days without eating a taco.
during my fixation, i've been paying a lot of visits to oaxaca, the NYC-area taqueria named for a mexican city that's best known for its moles & cheese. the taqueria's slogan is "revolucion de taco" & the employees wear t-shirts that say "the revolucion will be edible." on tuesday, the A-frame outside the 4th ave locale spoke of taco-flavored kisses. out of their three locations in brooklyn & one in manhattan, i mainly go to that 4th ave locale, as it's right outside of the union st R train stop. in a relatively short amount of time, i can hop the train up to union, pick up some beer at bierkraft & some tacos at oaxaca & jump right back home on the train. technically, oaxaca is BYOB, so i could sit at one of their few tables in the back or one of the seats at the bar & drink my bierkraft-purchased beer with my tacos, but i'm sort of a hermit.
occasionally i plan well & stop by during their taco happy hour, which means that from monday-thursday from 4-7pm and 11pm-close, you get $2 tacos (normally $3.25). for the quality you get, $2 per taco is a pretty badass deal. sure they serve other stuff like enchiladas, tortas & elote, but in my book, when those options are up against tacos, there ain't not option at all. in addition to the everyday selection of carne asada, pollo guisado, carnitas, frijoles & pescado tacos, they have some pretty regular specials like a korean taco, a chorizo taco & a potato y poblano taco, which has become my favorite of the bunch.
it's a taco with a base made up of poblano peppers y potato that's partly mashed & partly hash-brown like chunks. as are all of their tacos, it's topped with pickled onion, cilantro, cotija cheese & salsa, but it also comes with some sort of guac (that tends to mix with the potato) & a few corn kernels mixed in. the blend of ingredients & flavors is OUTSTANDING. it works best as a foil to one of their meatier tacos & i suppose that if you had them hold the cheese, it'd be a great vegan option. all around, it's just a plain tasty taco.
so yeah...it's the best of their tacos but nobody's perfect, so here's my complaint: they give you a dried-up, shitty lime slice with each taco. i like to sprinkle a little lime juice on all my tacos regardless of their flavor & when they give me a tiny lime with little-to-no juice in it, it does me no good at all. #whitepeopleproblems?
their beverage selection is ripe with bottles of jarritos soda. personally, i'd never tried a bottle of jarritos until i visited oaxaca, so i was all about getting one of them. because i'm part of the 3% of the population that enjoys fresca, i chose the jarritos toronja, a grapefruit soda. it's an all-natural soda made in mexico & like mexican cola, it's made with sugar instead of HFCS. after trying it, jarritos is now in the running for sodas i'd buy, since i'm trying to go the non-HFCS route. the flavor's crisp & clean & if you like fresca, you'll LOVE jarritos...that is unless you hate mexicans for some reason. if that's the case, drink your stupid fresca, xenophobe.
who knows? in a few weeks i may move on to some other phase but for now, while the taco fixation is running at maximum speed, i see myself making regular visits to oaxaca. these days, tasty tacos are my life force.
oaxaca, 250 4th ave, brooklyn, 718-222-1122