Loopland taquería situation update

The quest for decent tacos in Loopland continues. Since my earlier posting (August 18) I've tried five or six more places, but have still found nothing that compares with the best tacos in town.

The closest thing to acceptable breakfast tacos I've found so far, in that dreary stretch of suburbia between the Loops, is Ruthie's Mexican Restaurant, 11423 West Avenue, near Churchill High School. There used to be a Las Palapas restaurant in that location. The ambience of the place is formica with a soupçon of inefficient air conditioning, but it's clean, at least; the service was good, as was the coffee. The chilaquile tacos were unusual in their seasoning, interesting and tasty without being what I consider authentic (and I think that, after some 20 years as an aficionado of chilaquiles, I know something about what it should taste like). The worst sin in a chilaquile taco is to make it dry. These were definitely not dry; in fact, they sort of went too far in being moist. But the ingredients were all there, and reasonably well prepared.

The filling of potato, egg and cheese taco was slightly better than your average breakfast taco. There was, again, some kind of seasoning in the mix that I did not try to identify but simply enjoyed. Again, not mainstream authentic, but good. The filling of the bean and cheese taco was also correctly done, as was that of the potato, bacon and cheese taco.

What keeps these tacos from being in the top half of the class is the flour tortillas. They were just a little too dry, too chewy, too thick, as though they'd been prepared much earlier and had been sitting wrapped in a towel for an hour in a warm oven. I can understand that if I'd been there during the breakfast rush, but this was at about 10 AM, when there's time to prepare fresh tortillas to order.

Ruthie's