Tacos! Tuétano Taquería Old Town and the Taco Stand La Jolla
Despite having a good supplier of Mexican food ingredients in Shanghai, not to mention a pretty good taquería in Tacos El Paisa (they truly are good!), nevertheless I must have my fill of Mexican when I come back to California!
This time, I wanted to try a place I’d read about for a while, Tuétano Taquería, a place that makes tacos with bone marrow (tuétano in Spanish). They used to be located in San Ysidro, right by the border with Mexico, but they’ve moved to Old Town, which is much more convenient to us.
Their Old Town location is in this “Urban Market.”
Urban Market’s website calls themself a “curated food hall experience,” so I was expecting food hall vibes, but it turned out to be pretty much that taquería and a ceviche place called Mar Rustico, which I think is owned by the same people. So more like a couple eateries with a terrace. I tried to order a ceviche, from the ceviche place, but they were out of any of the options, which I found odd. They only had fish tacos.
So we just concentrated on our tacos from Tuétano. What a beautiful spread!
The tuétano tacos are served with the bone and a stick to push the marrow through the other side.
Under the bone was a layer of birria. Boy was this rich! The grease from the bone marrow quickly congealed around the sides of the container. Saturated fat alert! Tasty though. And at the same time, pricey, at $12.75 per taco.
We also got chicharrón en salsa verde with cheese. I was imagining crunchy pork skin tacos like what we had in Oaxaca, which I loved. But here it was more like the pork skin was stewed in the salsa verde, so they were more spongy and, well, tasted more like skin. This was also quite filling, with the layer of cheese griddled onto the thick corn tortilla.
I also got a rajas con crema, which is sliced poblano peppers in cream. This was, again, very rich, and a bit too salty and cheesy.
I think Tuétano Taquería is good to try, but I’m not sure I’m hankering to return.
Later, we went to our standby, the Taco Stand. It was a weird in-between meal time, so the line was surprisingly short.
I got one of my favorites, the camarón (shrimp) taco which comes with avocado and cabbage, and a creamy chipotle sauce. The shrimp are really nice, plump and juicy, and it’s just a great blend of ingredients.
I was quite hungry, so I ordered a pollo asado burrito, which comes with beans, tomato, guacamole and salsa. I always liked the pollo asado taco, which comes with basically the same ingredients minus the beans, but I think I was wanting beans.
The burrito was good, but the ratio of tortilla to filling was too high - a lot of empty tortilla folded around. I’ll stick to the taco version next time (besides I like the Taco Stand’s corn tortillas).
