Tacos are great. And there are many varieties. Street-style tacos are quite popular. These have some kind of filling - usually meat or fish, and veggies - folded in a small soft corn tortilla. Most taco food trucks sell this kind, as do many taquerias. Now-a-days, you can pretty much find them everywhere in South Sacramento. Purists claim these are honest to God authentic Mexican tacos.
There is also the regular soft taco where the shell is a larger fluffy flour tortilla wrapped around the filling. Usually the filling is some kind of meat, veggies, and cheese. I love flour tortillas, but I prefer to eat things in them burrito-style, or with my hands by tearing them apart and using the pieces to scoop up meat, beans, and rice from my plate. This site claims that flour tortillas originated along the U.S./Mexican border when Mexicans began using wheat flour that was prevalent instead of corn to make tortillas. I only know that my grandmother would make us homemade flour tortillas whenever she visited. My sister and I would devour them with butter as soon as they came off the stove.
Then there is the hard shell taco. There are a couple of sub-varieties of these. You're familiar with the mass-produced variety of hard shell tacos if you frequent Taco Bell or buy your packaged taco shells at the grocery store to make them at home. Packaged hard shell tacos are my least favorite, because the shell is usually stale, or the shell breaks apart after a couple of bites. I find them tasteless.
Okay, now we come to my favorite kind of taco - a hard shell variety, which will be the subject of my search in South Sac, and future posts for the next couple of weeks: The crispy fried taco. When I was growing up, my mother, who was Mexican-American, made tacos by wrapping the filling in a soft corn taco and then frying them. She made them that way, because that's how her mother made them. When done properly the corn tortilla is crispy and crunchy, but won't fall apart when you bite into it. And because it was soft when you began, the tortilla absorbs the juices and flavors of the meat making it moist and soft inside and muy delicioso! You won't get the same effect if you fry the tortillas empty, and then spoon the filling inside.
That method of making crispy fried tacos wasn't unique to my house. My best friend's mom, who was also Mexican-American, made tacos the very same way. And in talking to friends, and acquaintances who share my Chicano heritage, that's how they remember eating tacos as kids, and still make them at home today.
That confuses me because I have read that crispy fried tacos are an Anglo invention. This site reports from sources that authentic Mexican restaurants never offered crispy fried tacos, and that the idea of frying tacos originated in the U.S. Wikipedia claims crispy fried tacos are a California variant of the taco. Try telling that to Texans. Actually I suspect that back in the day you could find crispy fried tacos all over the Southwest, not just in California and Texas. Currently the best crispy fried tacos in my opinion are sold in Cactus Taqueria, a Mexican restaurant with two locations in the Bay Area. By the way, I recommend the crispy fried chicken tacos; here's the menu. They stuff the corn tortilla then briefly deep fry the whole thing. Then they add green leafy lettuce and guacamole. It's absolutely divine.
The problem I have is that I haven't found those delicious crispy fried tacos like my mom used to make here in South Sacramento. Worse, I suspect there is a bias against them, because some claim they are inauthentic tacos. I find that insulting to my Chicano heritage (even if I am only one-half Chicano).
So I am officially on the quest to find the best crispy fried tacos in South Sac. If they can make them at Cactus Taqueria, why can't some place sell them up here? If you have suggestions or leads, please let me know!
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