tacos de cachete -- cheek tacos

I was drving east on Irving Park the other day and just before Sheridan noticed a little joint called El Palmar with a hand-written sign in the window proclaiming "tenemos tacos de cachete." I had never heard of such a thing. I didn't have time to stop (late to work) but later I googled "tacos de cachete" and found out these are tacos of cheek meat.

So, until I can make it to El Palmar, has anyone had tacos de cachete anywhere around Chicago? Any recs? How are they typically served? Very curious, thanks!

bjt

El Palmar
1008 W Irving Park Rd
Chicago, IL 60613-2914
773-404-5969

You can get tacos de cachete at Arandas on 47th Street in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.



I guess they steam a cow head and give you whatever you want—cheek, tongue, eyeball, brain. We ordered some on the 47th-a-thon and you can see a picture of one in Seth's post on this event. I remember the meat being tasty but gelatinous. I'd happily eat another but haven't felt compelled to seek them out.

Taqueria Arandas
1738 W 47th St
Chicago
773-376-9770

Experience (and in some cases, my experience is named Rene G) confirms cachete is cow cheek in Chicago, so you should be able to get it most places advertising "cabeza al vapor," steamed cow head tacos. I've just started to explore Taqueria Los Altos de Jalisco, both right across the street from the Depot (I provided 5827 W. Roosevelt earlier this year, can't get independent confirmation at the moment) and at 1922 Cicero, both in Cicero, and think they do a great job.

Buche, another word used for cheek in some textbooks and communities (compare with bouche and boca, mouth), won't net you a cow cheek taco in Chicago - if you see that you're rolling the dice (usually based on regional origin of the proprietors, sometimes on vocabulary of the resettled and mixed diaspora here) between (pig) esophagus, tripe, and regular old carnitas. It's a problematic word that can mean maw, mouth, cheek, neck, esophagus, belly, stomach lining, or anything fat or cute like the whole pig by synecdoche, and as a food term seems confined here to the realms of the porcine.

thanks, Rene G and Santander . . . I am a fairly adventurous eater but I do have a mouth-feel weirdness thing going on with any thing overtly Gelatinous. (And I intended the capital G there.)

Sooooo, I will still soldier on and try some part/bits of a boiled head of some animal at El Palmar or other outposts and hope to report back.

bjt