No Hitters and Taco Dinners
This past Friday, my Taco Queen and I met up with the Doc at Taqueria LES on Orchard St. for what we expected to be a typical Taco Feast/’watch the Mets at the bar’ Friday. Better than your average Monday through Thursday and falling in the upper range of the ‘how was your weekend?’ scale. What we got was something much, much more.
Not only did we watch the first No-Hitter in Mets history in a bar full of Mets fans (No-han!!!!), but we had the best tacos we’ve experienced to date. Full disclosure: this wasn’t any of our first rodeo (meaning first time at Taq LES), but that doesn’t change that this was one of the most authentic Taquerias we’ve found in NYC. In fact, Taq LES is the epitome of a ‘hole-in-the-wall’ treasure of a taqueria. We said Dos Toros tried but fell short of being in our review.
The seating at Taqueria LES is arranged in individual tables, but the close proximity of each table makes you feel that you might as well be eating community style. This cluttered seating is accentuated by the tight quarters in which the restaurant resides. On the walls they have layers of paraphernalia ranging from classic rock tour posters to Los Angeles sports swag (as avid New York sports fans this took a little time for us to get past).
Now let’s get down to what’s between the tortillas. The best taco of the bunch was the Barbacoa (slow cooked lamb), but Taq LES is not a restaurant where you have to stick to their specialty. The Chorizo and Fish tacos were also excellent, and I also really enjoyed the Nopalitos (cactus). Of course I’m prejudice in this regard being that Taq LES is the only place I’ve ever had cactus, but still I would definitely recommend giving it a try.
Even the two selections we tried that we wouldn’t deem essential if you were to visit Taq LES, Carnitas (pork) and Bistec (steak) were much better than your average taco. We didn’t get a chance to sample the Cecina (salted beef) or Picadillo (ground beef), but we can’t imagine them to be anything less than stellar (we’ll let you know next time we visit Taq LES though).
In the bonus round, the Taco Queen recommended getting Chicken flautas. Flautas are described as ‘crispy tacos’ on the menu but look more in line with Taquitos. Either way they were delicious. If you can bring yourself to venture from the soft traditional tortilla and/or the version of hard tacos you generally encounter, flautas are a great way to go.
In closing, service is a little less than ideal. But the quality of the food and the fact that our waiter was busting ass working pretty much working every table in the place (probably between 15-20) made the slower beer refills more forgivable. If you are going to give Taq LES a try, we also recommend supplementing your meal with plenty of Tecates (sidenote; margaritas are also top notch if you’re looking to get a little taco-slutty). Then again, we probably drink too much…
- The Slut & Doc
Taqueria LES (Lower East Side)
198 Orchard St.
(Between Stanton & E. Houston)
Manhattan, NY 10002
Website: Nope
Twitter: To busy serving their ALWAYS packed taqueria to tweet.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/TAQUERIA-LES/124550270958114
Menu: We were able to dig this up –> http://www.menupages.com/restaurants/taqueria-lower-east-side/menu
Oh and one more thing…
NOHAN!!!!!
July 26th, 2012 at 12:48 pm
[...] options (Adobo and Pastor). Being that I try to set my taco max at 3 per order (unless I’m at Taqueria LES where I eat as many tacos as I can before I drift off into a chorizo coma), I had to choose between [...]
February 13th, 2013 at 3:50 pm
[...] like your average drunken romantic foray, the next day I couldn’t get my steady taco love Taqueria LES off my [...]