Taco House

Posted By Michael Stern on July 9, 2010 6:18 AM

When I solicited suggestions for where to eat in San Antonio, Chris Ayers wrote to say that he remembers going to Taco House when he was "barely big enough to see over the counter" and described it as "a true Roadfood eatery." What a good suggestion this turned out to be. I hadn't previously thought of San Antonio as a breakfast city, but it sure is; and Taco House is a shining example of why. More than a dozen different breakfast tacos are available, from bacon and egg to carne guisada (gravy-sopped beef) and lengua (tongue). Freshly-made flour tortillas make a big difference, delivering even the most plebeian filling with high honors. And by the way, Taco House's plebeian fillings are far from drab. Eggs are buttery; bacon is thick and smoky; nuggets of potato are cooked to a perfect point of inside creaminess and outside crunch.

At Chris's suggestion, I went for chorizo and egg, which, per local custom, is not eggs with a side order of chorizo sausage but rather eggs scrambled with ground up sausage to become an entirely new and different food: juicy, spicy and butter-rich. It's great on a plate with refried beans and potatoes or as the filling of a taco.

Lunch is a panoply of Tex-Mex fare including not just tacos but enchiladas, flautas, fajitas and chicken mole. If you order beanless chili, you get an enormous bowl of ground beef, red chile and spice: a real bowl of red. Fajitas, like tacos, are available with crisp or puffy tortillas. The latter are discs of corn masa quickly fried so they blow up like a flat sopaipilla.

Chorizo & Egg Plate

Chorizo & Egg Taco

Bacon & Egg Taco

Salsas

Chili

Menudo