The Hunt is On: Taco Quest

There appear to be no good taquerías in San Antonio north of Loop 410. Ordinarily, this would be of no great concern to me; it would just be another attribute of the homogenized, pasteurized, suburbanized anytown-America that infects northern Bexar County. But lately, I've been making regular trips to that traffic-clogged wasteland, and have found myself searching for that staple of San Antonio cuisine, the taquería.

There are, let me say, taquerías here and there, sprinkled across Loopland. There just aren't any good ones, at least not in that slice of dross that creeps out across US 281. I've found a place on Bitters Road which has some interesting things to offer, but not including a good breakfast taco. I've found a place at the Brookhollow exit, which I hope never to go back to. And a place on West Avenue, advertising on one of those nylon ready-in-ten-minutes signs that it was voted Best Tacos in San Antonio by readers of the local newspaper; I suspect the sign was stolen. The breakfast tacos there were perhaps the worst I've had anywhere.

Breakfast tacos are the paradigmatic San Antonio food. People all over the country are familiar with what they consider Mexican food -- and let's face it: there are so many authentic types of Mexican food that the very label, "Mexican," approaches meaninglessness -- but it's only here in the Alamo City that the breakfast taco has acquired iconic status. It isn't unique to the city; it wasn't created here; the ingredients are easily obtainable throughout North America (though I had a hard time finding flour tortillas in Toronto), possibly the world. But it's here that the breakfast taco has reached its artistic acme. It is here, in these dusty overheated streets, that the tortilla, the egg, the cheese and the salsa have come together with other occasional ingredients to become ... drumroll, please ... The Breakfast Taco.

There are perhaps 20 taquerías within a mile or two of my house. Hildebrand Avenue alone, in the reach from McCullough to Fredericksburg, must have at least that many. It boasts a small café that fooled Bon Appetit magazine into thinking the best tacos in America were to be found there, but all the places along that street (and I believe I've tried all of them) have, with a single exception, outstanding breakfast tacos. You can't swing a dead armadillo downtown without hitting a good taco place. Southtown and the Barrio are aflood with outstanding taco places. And I will say that, based on my fairly wide-ranging experience, the best breakfast tacos I have ever had were at a little place on Cupples Road, near Highway 90, called (I think) Natalie's (close second: Lula's, on Travis Street, especially now that Little House Café is no more).

But the point is that, in San Antonio -- in old, established, slightly decayed, vaguely decadent, tolerant, unruffled and unhurried San Antonio, the parts that were here before freeways -- good, really, really good tacos are as ubiquitous as prickly-pear cactus.

But when you get out to the Loop, something happens. The food changes, and the nature of the restaurants change. Somewhere between Oblate and Isom, chilaquiles lose the scrambled eggs; chorizo becomes plain ol' Jimmy Dean sausage; tortillas get thicker, and Velveeta replaces melted cheese. Tex-Mex restaurants, some of them, aren't even open for breakfast: viz., Panchito's on West Avenue. The very cultural architecture of the city is choked off, it seems, by the circle of Loop 410, and what little gets through is but a pale, undesirable imitation of the city's defining cuisine.