The taqueria saga part one: La Tako Nako

Note: The saga will improve from here on out because *cue hallelujah chorus* I finally have a smartphone, which means pictures, which means a future decrease in descriptive adjectives and an increase in incredibly graphic food pornography. Mmm food porn. But hopefully this will turn into a mini-series about the various taco trucks and hole-in-the-wall type spots for tacos in Charlottesville, because they seem to be cropping up everywhere lately? So basically just prepare for a lot of posts about Doritos Locos tacos. Kidding, only like twelve or so. 

HWAET. I'd had my eye on the La Tako Nako truck ever since last summer when a co-worker who ran rescue told me he and his chief frequented the place for some late night taco (tako?)-y goodness. I continued to covet the truck from the cold perfection of the streets of the Stonefield complex, yearning for the warmth and honesty of food made in a vehicle after shelling out $11 and part of my soul to see a movie at Regal. 

So this past Friday when two fellow food-venturers and friends expressed a desire to visit a taco truck I said yes, si, por supuesto. We planned to go to the big yellow truck that just says "TAQUERIA" and is usually parked on the corner of Barracks Road and Emmett Street across from the Bank of America, but when we got there (around 7 PM) it was gone. We quickly rerouted to the Tako Nako truck. When we arrived there was no line and it took maybe five minutes for us to get five tacos; take THAT fast food. They came packed on double Styrofoam plates with aluminum foil on top. This kept them mostly warm in the 15-or-so minutes it took us to get back to the house to eat.

In all honesty I was starving when we returned and did not take the kind of delicate nibbles necessary to appreciate the nuances of the meal. Also, as someone who cut their teeth (or more accurately, their gums) on the balsa wood-like shells of El Paso taco kits growing up, I'm not going to pretend like I know a whole lot about what constitutes a quality/"authentic" (oh how I hate that word)/ideal taco. I have only my taste buds with which to judge. Hopefully with time my taco rating skills will become keener, like how a fine wine gets better with age or the things they make on Epic Meal Time become more appealing the more episodes you watch in a row. 

Taco Takedown-Breakdown
Overall: The name really gets me jazzed, and the salsas -- especially the red one -- had a sweet, layered heat. Big lime wedge = a plus. The tortillas were meh, corn (I prefer flour with lots of lard) and floppy. The beef lengua was clearly lengua, juicy and fatty and good, though it could have done with a little salt or some seasonings of any kind, really. Friends said the chorizo was pretty tasty. Toppings (we opted for everything) were not memorable. Don't come here expecting a lot of choices for your meal; the menu is three or four items long and the range of add-ons seems limited.
Verdict: 6.5/10. Good. Worth a visit for sure and definitely if you're in the area looking for something quick/cheap to eat, but as a friend put it, "not the best taco I've ever had." 
Hours: No idea, but they've been in the lot and open every time I've been by. 
Price: $2 a taco. Cash only as far as I could tell.  
Location: Hydraulic Road, right near Stonefield and in the lot of the Hydraulic Wash Laundromat. Sometimes the parking lot is full, but it's maybe a five minute walk from the Stonefield parking lot to the truck if this is the case. 

In the beginning, there was spinach and toast

Sometimes you start out with big dreams for your food blog. The one squash blossom growing on the back porch sparks visions of delicate pastas with brown-butter sauces and ethereal little fired blossoms floating on top. Or the announcement of some local farm-to-table gala awakes in me a desire to buy a dress from a vintage store and a floral headband and slap down $150 I don't have to eat some quasi-heirloom-organic-sustainable-sulfate free-no animal tested-caprese salad. Or a Food Lab-esque investigation into the best ways to make homemade waffle fries including a chemical analysis of the ways in which oil temperature affects the overall starchiness of the final product (...would this even affect starchiness? 10th grade chemistry, come back to me).

And then sometimes you come home from work and realize you don't have much in the way of food, or money for that matter. Or energy. But you do have frozen spinach, which gets dumped into a saucepan with lemon and garlic, and flour (and baking soda, and olive oil), which gets fried into a makeshift pita-thing. And then you put a little sour cream on top and make your version of a vegetarian taco and while it's not necessarily the best thing you've ever cooked it's pretty tasty given the circumstances. And the circumstances are exhaustion and miserliness. Damned if the desert that is my pantry is going to drive ME to spend money.

This is the crux of what defines the term collegiate gastronaut, at least for the purposes of this blog. It means an overwhelming desire to embark on deep space-level culinary explorations WHILE recognizing that sometimes the NASA budget has been slashed due to the recession down on Earth. You always want to send drones to Mars but if healthcare's in the shitter what can you do, you know? You just have to be content to noodle around with some old atmospheric balloons you found.

More food-musings to come.