West Chicago taco crawl - March 17

Flip, electric mullet and I are planning a West Chicago taco exploration on March 17. Exact start time and details are still being finalized so you could influence them, but the general idea is to meet in West Chicago sometime between 10 & 11, and spend the next 3 or 4 hours samping as many taquerias as we can.

The Aurora taco crawl went well enough, and we know West Chicago is even more fertile ground.

I like the sound of that. Count me in, tentatively.

I have the preliminary list of places we're going. I'll post them as soon as I get home.

Flip

In no particular order here are some of the locations we're planning on visiting.

Byby's
Address: 142 W Washington St, West Chicago , IL 60185
Phone: (630) 562-1710

El Tesoro
Address: 129 W Roosevelt Rd, West Chicago , IL 60185
Phone: (630) 293-0190

La Villita Tacos
Address: 956 E Roosevelt Rd, West Chicago , IL 60185
Phone: (630) 293-9666

Mexico Chiquitos Inc
Address: 205 Main St, West Chicago , IL 60185
Phone: (630) 231-6686


Taqueria El Nero
Address: 116 Main St, West Chicago , IL 60185
Phone: (630) 562-2114


Taqueria Los Potrillos
Address: 110 S Neltnor Blvd, West Chicago , IL 60185
Phone: (630) 876-1135

Ellectric mullet has also told me that there are a few supermarket taquerias that might be of some interest. As these thing usually go we'll plan to start with an outline of several places to visit, then expand upon that with the possibility of adding some locations.

If anyone has additional recommedations please feel free to chime in.

Flip

Silly me, I thought you meant west Chicago, not West Chicago. I figured on a bunch of 60622 zipcodes, so I figured right down the street, could be fun. But outside the city, on St. Paddy's day? I've got a different ethnic cuisine for that day.

Good luck, and have fun.
SSDD

Must say I like your relativistic signature, headcase.

I'm going to try to make it.

Unless there are any objections, it would make sense to start at La Villita Tacos on 956 E Roosevelt around 11:00am. This is the furthest east and is a decent starting point to move west down Roosevelt and then up Joliet Rd and finally ending up in downtown West Chicago.

Sounds good to me. Unfortunately I have to stop at 3pm, which may or may not conflict with getting to every place...

That sounds like a plan. I'm in a similar situation with time.

This sounds like a plan. Since most of the places we're going to are fairly close to each other I don't think that there will be a problem with time constraints.

Flip

I love Mexican food and have been wanting to go on one of these, so I will try to make it! Hope to see you guys tomorrow.

GreenFish wrote:I love Mexican food and have been wanting to go on one of these, so I will try to make it! Hope to see you guys tomorrow.

It appears that we may have a few new faces tomorrow. So I'll take a moment to describe how we've handled these events in the past.

In the past we've ordered at least a steak tacos for comparison at each restaurant. We also try to order any special taco that the location prides itself upon. These have been items like goat, cecina, or carnitas in the past. Sometimes we'll also order addtional items if it is a specialty of the house. For instance I would not be surprised if we end up with a huitlecoche or calabezza quesadila at ByBy's tomorrow.

Judging is, for the most part, done personally. Unlike the beefathon's there is no scorsheets.

Lets have some fun!

Flip

What, no recap?

Sorry to have missed this...

Sorry, I got busy on Saturday nignt and forgot.

First off, thanks to everybody - I had a great time. Sorry I had to leave so abruptly when my cellphone rang.

Three sets of two places. Can't remember the names for any of them off the top of my head, but I have a business card from one of the places upstairs.

Set 1: the strip mall on Roosevelt just inside the east edge of the city limits. The sit-down place put cheese and tomatoes on my steak taco because I said no cilantro. Nothing special. The grocery store lamb taco had a good intiial taste, but the aftertaste stayed in my mouth halfway through the next stop!

I would not return to either of those places.

Set 2: The fanciest sit down place (El Tesoro) and the big grocery store. I liked specific tacos at these places the best, but they were uneven. The chorizo tacos (which ended up being the standard instead of the steak tacos, as the steak tacos were not particularly memorable anywhere) were excellent at both places.

These are the places where I'd probably stop for lunch on a weekend after playing golf.

Set 3: The places in downtown West Chicago. I didn't like the first place (Nero), although the corundas (sp??) were tasty - the tacos were poor. Part of the problem was that the booths were tiny. Byby's had the most consistent tacos top-to-bottom, but their bests were not the best of the day IMO. Of course, that could just be the curse of the last location.

I'd try Byby's again if I was in West Chicago frequently.

Other thoughts:
- Grocery store tacos seemed to have the driest meat.
- Would grocery store tacos be more likely to use meat close to its expiration date?
- The back of a Honda Pilot is not a bad place for a tailgating buffet, I need to remember that for future reference.
- Six places and none of them routinely use handmade fresh tortillas? (The one that claimed to actually didn't use them for tacos until we bargained with them for a while, and it made a difference)

The first two places mentioned by TK were La Villitas Taqueria and La Villitas mercado. Neither were particularly good, and I agree that in general grocery stores seem to be more challenged to cook, hold and deliver a decent product than a regular taqueria.

There was, in the same strip mall as the La Villitas, a Panaderia whose name I did not record. I took home three things from there - a triangular pastry filled with sweet potato, a crispy, crusty, sugary round thing not dissimilar to a French palmier, but thicker and with sugar sprinkled on it is addition to the sugar glaze, and something they called a "rock" which had a heavy doughnut consistency, with some coconut and other stuff mixed in, again sprinkled with sugar - sort of a Mexican fritter.

The triangle was excellent other than the frequent Mexican pastry issue - it was a bit dry. There was sweet potato in the bread, perhaps a bit of pumpkin pie seasoning, and it made a great breakfast with a cup of coffee. In general, Mexican pastry does not thrill me because it is dry and simple, but this was good by any measure. And the rock was also pretty good. The dough also had a brown tinge, I think from molasses, and though very heavy was complex and tasty. Not as good as the sweet potato triangle, but good.

The next two places were El Tesoro, which is a pretty good place with an interesting range of foods and beverages, and El Chiquito which seems to be a chain associated with Mexican markets. This one was much larger and busier than others I have been to, so it had a larger selection (including some interesting guisados) and the food was clearly fresher. Plus it had some bright, attractive murals on the wall. So I wanted to like it more than I did, in the end. Not bad, but with El Tesoro just two doors down, the likelihood that I will go back is not that great.

The Corundas at El Nero were the best thing all day. Little masa pyramids steamed banana leaves were wonderful, served with pork in a green chile sauce. The meat and sauce were just okay, but the sauce added a nice piquancy to the delectable corundas. Wonderful. El Nero also offers a very nice selection of breakfasts, huevos in many forms, chilaquiles, etc. So I would definitely go back when searching for breakfast in West Chicago, which is a situation I have found myself in before.

Byby's was good, as usual. Their tinga (a braised beef which ended up that day tasting almost like shredded beef with onions in barbecue sauce, with a hint of the seasoning used for pork al pastor) was interesting and tasty. In addition to the tacos, we had their Melon Agua Fresca, which was very good, and a Flor de Calabasa Quesadilla, which was okay (we actually asked for Huitlacoche, but they were out). The Flor did not seem as flavorful as usual, tho as TK suggested we might have been suffering from taco fatigue.

There are two things required for a great taco - good, fresh tortillas, and excellent meat. I know there are arguments with my deconstructive approach to a lot of foods, since people have argued with me and I have personally experienced, hamburgers, Italian Beef and other things where the totality was very good, while the components were much less pleasing. But I think for a taco, which is simply meat, tortilla, cilantro, and onion, perhaps with a bit of salsa, there is no way to "hide" inferior tortillas and meat. On the other hand, it is hard to go wrong with cilantro and onions.

The places that browned their meat on the griddle generally fared better than those that just threw it straight on the taco (for steak tacos, al pastor and chorizo - barbacoa, tinga and other stewed meats would not be browned, of course).

I agree with TK that the only meat that approached excellence was the chorizo. There was one steak taco that had very good meat, but I did not take notes and do not remember which one it was. Maybe one of the others can add that.

So, in general, a pleasant outing and the company was good. But it did not add any new taco destinations, to my surprise. The best of the west for tacos remain El Pulpo in Westmont and Los Cabritos in Aurora would be my choices. El Tesoro and Byby's are good, too, but not so much for tacos. And I have to order Corundas more often.

And of all the places I have sampled, the tacos at El Pulpo, with the Carniceria El Pulpo just two doors down, are the best because the meat is usually quite good. Not always perfect - I had some a couple of weeks ago that were less than wonderful. They do better in the morning and early afternoon than late in the day when the meat has been held longer (probably true of most places?), but usually very good. And if you get there before noon on a weekend to enjoy the carnitas and barbacoa, delightful.

Thanks to Flip and Tony for oranizing this.