Five Foodies Attack Tacos in Yuma

Today ed (from Yuma) wants you to join Tina and him and some others for tacos. Kirk or Cathy will be your tour guide for the blog's next post.

Just like Chaucer's pilgrims headed toward Canterbury, true foodies all make a trip to that culinary Mecca of Yuma, Arizona.  Okay, stop laughing - just kidding.  But recently we were fortunate to have Rich Kaszeta, a professional bacon photographer (among other careers) and a food blogger from New Hampshire  (Offbeat Eats) visit our desert metropolis.

Even though he claimed to be in town for work, it seemed like his real -- though secret -- purpose was to eat as much Mexican food as he could in a week.  Micaela, her husband Brian, Tina, and I joined him for one evening of tacoing on 8th St (Calle Ocho).

Since we wanted to try places that the others had not visited before, we started at Asadero Los Compadres, which Tina and I had tracked down to its new location at the corner of 8th and 20th Ave: After we ordered the tacos, we were given a couple of squeeze bottles and a standard wheel of condiments: Certainly nothing very special here. The best, in my opinion was the pico de gallo (also sometimes called salsa la bandera): The yellow squeeze bottle contained guacamole sauce that was rather thin and not especially full of avocado flavor.  The red bottle contained a very fiery salsa.

The only Agua Fresca available was a homemade jamaica: It was decent, but for me, nothing to write home about -- but you never know about somebody whose home is in New Hampshire.

We each ordered uno taco de cabeza: uno de asada: y uno de pastor: My favorite was the cabeza, which was rich, soft, and deeply flavored.

Of course that preference may be because I misjudged how spicy the red salsa was, so my other two tacos tasted mostly like fire.  Chewy and flavorful fire, indeed, but too saucy for me to discern much else. Kirk would have loved them.  The general concensus of the others was that the pastor was good, and Rich and Tina, in particular, said the Asada seemed tender, smoky, and fresh.  Perhaps that is a result of the outdoor grill on which the pieces of steak were cooked: After pausing to appreciate the sunset, which made even the parking lot of a service station seem kind of beautiful, we went off to the next place, Corona: (Thanks, Rich, for that photo)

To be honest, I had been a little disappointed in los Compadres, though that may have been partly my own overzealous squeezing. It had been good, but not outstanding, so I approached Corona with some trepidation; after all, I had not been that impressed with it on my last visit.

That just goes to show how little I know because all of us thought that Corona was, on this evening at least, the better of the two.  Here, the condiments are lined up on a counter, but unfortunately my picture doesn't show the grilled jalapenos and onions: I started with a chicken taco and an Asada taco: We all agreed that the chicken was outstanding, flavorful, tender, and moist.  The best chicken taco I've eaten in Yuma.  While the Asada had a nice smoky flavor, it seemed a little chewier than the Asada at the first taco truck. I can't say more.

Before we began eating, someone said "Micaela's tacos are so pretty, you need to take a picture of them."  So I did: And yes, those are beautiful tacos. And you can also see how much a person can alter/develop/influence the taste of his/her taco by choosing different combos of condiments.

As we were eating, every one was praising the pastor, so I had to have one of those as well. After decoration, it looked like this: Although the meat was a little greasy, the taste of the pastor was excellent -- succulent, tender, smokey and fully flavored. In general, we thought it better than the pastor at los Compadres.

We also appreciated that a free bowl of beans came with each order:
While not the world's finest frijoles, they were still welcome. Of course, we could have added onion, cilantro, and roasted jalapeno etc to the little bowls, but none of us was thinking clearly that evening. 

In addition, we all loved the limonada (oops, not pictured), though Brian and Micaela reported that the horchata was a little grainy at the bottom.

While these two trucks may not be the very best in Yuma, Rich assured us that they were better than any in New Hampshire.  In any case, we all had a good time, and as Micaela said, "it's so nice to go out with people who don't think that it's weird to talk about food all night."  Yup, she's right about that!

Comments

[micaela]

oh yum, now I want to go again!!! It is definitely fun & reassuring to spend time with people who don't mind spending hours talking about food. Makes me happy for *days* after.

The colors of that sunset were so spectacular... definitely added to the enjoyment of our food.

[Rich Kaszeta]

It was a very good time, indeed. All said, that week I ate at 7 different taco stands in Yuma (plus Los Manjares). I can't say that Yuma is my favorite travel destination, but it's one of the places I eat the best.

Looking like I'll be back in August.

[nhbilly]

That's it? I think you get better dives in LA. But it has been awhile for me.

[Food Marathon]

A Yuma Taco Food Marathon... well done. And Lebanese cooking and Thai food in Thailand to boot. Excellent posts lately.

[JOSEANGEL]

O dios,

pienso q son tan deliciosos!!

jaja

[ed (from Yuma)]

Yes, it was fun Rich and Micaela. Glad we could do that.

And yeh, billy, these are not the best trucks in in the area - rather more middle of the road. But Rich and Micaela had already eaten at the top tier. I will say that the pollo at Corona was excellent.

Thanks FM and gracias Jose.

[nhbilly]

LoL it is hard to top the best once you had it. End up being a taco snob ;-) It sure is hard to top expectations.

[Masa Assassin]

ahhh my favorite subject, awesome job everyone. Its so nice when you can go with people who share the same passion.

[Rich Kaszeta]

Here's my writeup of the same event:

http://offbeateats.blogspot.com/2009/07/doing-yuma-taco-crawl-yuma-az.html