Breakfast Taco Update: Los Roberto's (sic) Taco Shop

Breakfast tacos are the paradigmatic food of San Antonio. Oh, I know, some people think it's enchiladas, and it's true that those staples of Mexican food remain popular the length and breadth of this wonderfully lame city. But in my lifetime, they have been surpassed by the equally humble breakfast taco.

Breakfast tacos have a wide variety, from plain old bean-and-cheese or papas-y-huevos to more elaborate concoctions, including my favourite, chilaquiles. They are available for very small money in hundreds and hundreds of shops all over town, and have even begun appearing, in more mundane, even dumbed-down forms, in national-chain fast-food establishments like Taco Bell and Jack-in-the-Box, and other places that sell foods adapted to the homogenous and undiscerning palate.

So how is it that Loopland -- the wide swath of relatively new-built city between the Loop 410 and Loop 1604 -- can stubbornly maintain so depressing a dearth of quality comida tipica?

This morning my friend Rick and I made a second visit to Los Roberto's (sic) Taco Shop on Bitters Road. Last time we were there, I ordered a "Texas burrito"; I don't remember now what was in it, only that I didn't care for it. But I was willing to put that down to a poor choice on my part, so we gave them another chance to impress.

Los Robertos is a typical small restaurant of the mom-and-pop variety, which despite the shopping-center location offered the promise of distinctive food prepared to old family recipes. Rick went for the carne asada tacos; I tried the chilaquiles plate, which came with potatoes and beans. (I've noticed -- and I think I've even mentioned it before in this blog -- that more and more places seem to be abandoning Spanish rice in favour of potatoes, especially at breakfast. Besides being, to my mind, inauthentic, the potatoes-and-beans combination lacks the nutritional value of rice-and-beans. Since so many people eat so many of their meals away from home these days, this is an ominous development. But that's another gripe.)  Rick's tacos were "just okay -- no more than two and a half out of five." They were overloaded, he thought, with guacamole and pico de gallo.

My order was not as impressive. The chilaquiles themselves were about as good as his tacos: too many tortilla chips, cut too long for comfort, and not enough of the other good things that make the dish my favourite. The tortillas were fair, and the beans were actually the best thing on the plate. And the coffee was on the high side, qualitatively. If I left it at that, the place would actually be worth going back to if I were in the area at meal time and didn't have any strong desire to experience true quality.

But the potatoes were absolutely the worst I've had in years and years and years and years. They were plain ol' straight-cut french fry potatoes, frozen I suspect, and cooked an insufficient length of time in old oil that wasn't hot enough to do the job properly. And they were served almost cold. It amazes me that the cook could think that anyone would like potatoes prepared that way. I even tried adding salt to them, to make them palatable, something I almost

never do, but it was no use; they were just too badly prepared.

A sad day for Mexican food in San Antonio.

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