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Taquería Datapoint
1702 West Gramercy Place

(at the junction of Fredericksburg and Zarzamora roads)

Let's face it: very few Tex-Mex-style restaurants aspire to a fronteras version of haute cuisine. They're just places where working people can grab lunch; their aim is to provide reasonably good food, done in a familiar style, at prices that the local workforce is willing to pay every day.

With that in mind, Taquería Datapoint is an unqualified success.

This converted fast-food restaurant, which most recently housed a slightly more pretentious Tex-Mex place, offers just what the locals need and want during their lunch hours, as can be inferred from the crowd that squeezed in just as we were leaving this morning. It's a small place, with just seven tables for four, plus a two-top to bring capacity up to a nice, round number. When we arrived, the place was all but empty, and the four employees were enjoying a convivial social hour between the breakfast and lunch rushes. If I had thought that was too many people for such a small place, I'd have been wrong. The two kitchen workers and the two waitresses were just enough warm bodies to keep the place turning over. Only the drive-through window had a line.

The draw isn't just the good quality of food. The portion sizes are on the large side, yet the prices are competitive with other places in the area. The tortillas are hand-made in house, and while the flour tortillas were just good, the corn tortillas were excellent. The chips, served with a roasted-pepper salsa, had a slightly sweet aftertaste that added an interesting note. They could have been fresher, but were perfectly acceptable as offered. The coffee, too, was good, and served in large mugs, which kept the staff from having to spend extra time refilling them, while keeping the customer placated with drink.

Last city inspection: April 2012
15 demerits

Our choices for entrées were from the thirty or so listed lunch plates on the menu: pork al pastor, and milanesa. Both dishes were overloaded with food. The pork al pastor was a huge serving, probably twice as much as would have been expected, and the meat was lean and well-seasoned. Most surprisingly, it had almost no grease. It was served with Spanish rice, which was fresh and tasty, and an unusual serving of refried beans, which had a subtle flavour and the colour of terra cotta.

The milanesa plate came with two good-sized cutlets, the Spanish rice, a small salad, and a huge pile of crinkle-cut French fried potatoes. The fries could have benefitted from a few more seconds in the fryer, but they weren't so undercooked as to warrant grousing about (much as I enjoy that). The breading on the cutlets was brightly seasoned and adhered so well to the meat itself that it was difficult to separate them for tasting. This is, I consider, a good thing. The breading, after cooking, took on a darker colour than I normally see on this dish, and I was expecting to find it tasting burned; but it didn't. It was, in fact, a very good milanesa, having too a tender texture that made superfluous the flimsy steak knife provided.

The place had no ambience beyond the expected fast-food style of the building, but it was clean and neat, and blessedly free of the undesirable insect life that plagues the town at this time of year. Taquería Datapoint fully deserves the crowds that it attracts.