¿Por Que No? (Portland, Oregon)

Their website has a "mythology" page, on which the owner, Bryan Steelman, praises the "honest smiles of the people" of Mexico. These pale, taco-induced smiles around me, then, must be the other sort. I must misunderstand the kitchen staff on their break joking about Portlandia in Spanish--how could their latin tongues know irony?

This may seem beside the point, but we are concerned with matters of the tongue. If, like the owner, we are inclined to trust honesty, how can we trust the artfully distressed brick walls, where a profusion of Guadalupes watch over us?

Personally, I think honest food is a nonthing, a dopey Jamie Oliverism. Indeed, this is precisely why I distrust this food, which sports dual pretensions of being authentically Mexican and locally sourced. Each meat is preceded with--a what? Place? Company? Brand? Farm? It hardly matters, so long as we know it came from Somewhere.

It seems to be a winning duo of pretense: patrons are always spilling out in lively lines, energized by the imminence of tacos. (Or, let's be honest: of decor.)

I took a photo!

The Tacos: 3/5 Relieved of its proper nouns, the meat shines. That's the wrong verb for this meat; it is, as they say, solid. Both beef and chicken were tender yet charred, juicy yet toothsome. There is of course a lot more than beef and chicken tacos on the menu, including vegetables, fish, squid, and shrimp. Noteably, no tripe, tongue, or heart. I can't blame them--I can't stomach to try such stuff, either.

The meat has been pampered, but the tortilla has been abused. The menu says they're "fresh housemade corn tortillas!" and perhaps this is true: they were fresh a few days ago. I only complain because a $3 taco (they're small) has a certain onus. It's not bad, but it's not ideal. It falls apart a bit, it lacks that suppleness. Still, I devoured it.

Acoutrement: 3/5 Your hand is forced somewhat by the salsas that are already on the taco. They have a braggable selection in plastic squeeze bottles, but my tacos came with an enervated salsa casera and some kind of orange goo. The menu tells me this is "crema." It is creamy. Oh, maybe I'm a bit stubborn when it comes to tacos--surely cream can't hurt. After all, Guy Fieri's tacos come with crema. Er.

Value: 2/5 $3 isn't absurd for a gourmet taco, but what's so special about them? Is it that Bryan Steelman went on a trip to Mexico ten years ago, and culinary history changed forever?

Other: 4/5 I have pilled this plate with vitriol already, but there's no denying this place is a phenomenon, and coming here is to experience it. It's in its prime. Somehow, it snowballed just right; everyone goes to the place everyone goes.

Overall: 3/5 Come for the above, stay for some pretty good tacos. Also, the aguas frescas are good, or at least interesting. The jamaica is good shorthand for the particular tastes appealed to here: very strongly brewed, with not much sugar.

Zack's Shack (Portland, Oregon)

 If not harrassed, he seemed tired, this waiter, host, guy behind the counter, whatever: this poor man was this place's everything, at that hour. That awkward hour between lunch and dinner, when eateries empty and coffee shops swell with the denial of the seista rolling in like fog. Actually, isn't that precisely hot dog hour? Strange.

As the only customer, how could I make the loud, unmistakeable gesture of pulling out a camera?

The dog: 4/5 This blog post is my sole claim to hot dog gourmandaise, but an excess of cultivation is alien to the taste of a hot dog. They are a fine thing, and are ruined by deliberation. It was delicious. Juicy, but not that pack of slimy weiners dripping from the fridge. Because let's admit it, a good hot dog is contained obscenity. The way we like our objects. You see? Ruined.

Acoutrement: 2/5 I misunderstood the menu, reading "coleslaw" and imagining sauerkraut. The fault is mine, of course, but is there a reason I was barred from choosing condiments at my leisure, free from the urgent surveilance of the waiter, however well-meaning? Why must I choose from these cute names under which condiments strain in nearly unreadable type? This may seem like a lot to ask, but I have one more question: Who puts coleslaw on a hot dog?

It is with some relief I note that this dog is not slathered in incongrouously soothing slaw. However, one of them is naked.

Other: 3/5 Finding this faintly sad void where later barflies would gather, I evacuated to the sidewalk benches, which was a pleasant sit, despite adjacency to the wider, busier part of Hawthorne. The gaze drifts to tacos, just down the street, and indeed, ¿por que no?

Overall: 4/5 When I ventured back inside to bus my empty basket, dear reader, a discovery! In my former haste, when I had feared the waiter's wary eye, I had missed the patio out the back door, where ping-pongers gaily swing their paddles in the sunshine--which in this blunt climate, even in the height of summer, withers. And as I departed, lo, I spied on the menu those words--nasty in form but welcome in significance--that I had suspected: "build your own." It's not exactly right, but it will do.

Robo Taco (Portland, Oregon)

I refuse to photograph these tacos. Not because they're so horrible to look at, although I'm not keeping much from you. They come on a paper-encrusted tray, with a troubling amount of space between each flat taco. I refuse to out of self-consciousness, not wanting to be one of those people who photograph what they eat. Nausea toward unceasing aestheticism does not stop aesthetically mediated decorum, nor does it stop the internal spewing of judgements that so offend an anti-sensibility sensibility. Note that above I noted that the space between the tacos is troubling. What kind of eaters note such things? What kind of eaters, indeed, take notes? What kind of people are "eaters," when there is nobody who does not eat?

Not the intended patrons of Robo Taco, although certainly the paintings of robots and colorful, presumably taco-producing locales are designed to appeal to someone's sense of cuteness. It is not quite "stoner food," but a category of food at once more general and specific, "post-bar food." With its homey multicolored lights, it is a kind of hospital for the strained aesthetic economies that surround it, bars so dimly lit that they appear to have lost electricity--something meant to magically displace onto its customers. I may have my circutry metaphors crossed, but that's a lot of potential resistance. Just how lively can one become when sufficiently sedated?

The distance between lively and deadened isn't far. It's about a block. Here, there is nothing to appreciate and nitpick. There are no appreciators and nitpickers orchestrating experiences. There is no nuance. Robo Taco has created an ontology of taco. Taco is taco. Meat is meat. Relleno is relleno. Food does not come on the painstakingly composed plates of cuisine, but is made of discrete components. A chile relleno plate does not have a chile relleno, but has chile relleno; it contains beans, rice, and kind of Mexican mash of chopped-up chile rellenos and salsa. It's not difficult to imagine robots in the kitchen.

There is an automatism in eating here, too. When every thing is a proper noun, there is no reason to develop knowledge about any of it. It is consumed like a landmark. Which I presume is as lovely as anything can be sometime after midnight, the waning of alcohol pressing on the back of the skull, the electricity both dead and revealed not to be static, after all. I'll leave the tacos to people with such needs. Robo Taco's place in the local geography is clear, but this is a blog of a wider area and mood. We map a different index, photographing and nitpicking food because we're innocent enough to seek out innocence. We want to eat the taco that does not invite us to wonder if it's the right taco. We at Street Meat Nation are nostalgics.

The Taco: 3/5.
Accoutrement: 4/5.
Other: 3/5, but I speculate: 5/5 if drunk and/or hungover.
Overall: 3/5-4/5.

Agave (Ashland, Oregon)

If you have any sense, I won’t be able to convince you that the tacos at Agave are anything other than mediocre. But once, under the influence of oxytocin and a little alcohol, I ate tacos there that can only be described as transcendent. I objected to the aesthetics of them--the repackaging of Mexican food as self-consciously healthful and mild--yet I could not deny the sheer pleasure of biting into one. There are advantages to Mexico as discovered by yuppies over Mexico as imported nostalgically over the border by immigrants. For one, the meat was cooked perfectly, meltingly, rather than grilled or fried to a crisp. Wait, sorry, that’s the only thing. But that went a long way, and everything else was good. The salsa, while it lacked heat, had the sharp and sweet flavors of cilantro and fresh tomatoes of the non-insipid variety. The tortillas were at once crisp and soft, not stale, damp, and falling apart.


I didn’t think about any of this then--I was too surprised at how thoroughly I enjoyed it. I had scoffed at this place every time I passed its signage that proudly displays a plant as if it’s a revelation. Imagine if it had been named “Cabbage”. Though perhaps it should have been. There’s plenty of cabbage on the menu, and the only agave for sale is in the form of tequila. You may need it, if their sunny attempts to transport you to Mexico fail and you’re forced to face the food under the garish grey light of these latitudes in winter.

These transcendent tacos, they are only known by one other person, the same who I lunched with. It was pushing our luck to go back to Agave after sharing such gustatory delight there. It is to the cook’s credit that the tacos deluded us into thinking that they emanated from some ontic stability, to which we could return at our leisure. We did. The tacos literally fell apart in my hands, despite their wet innards being quarantined by two tortillas. The tortillas had come out of a bag, probably one that was at least two days old. The moldy aftertaste came from precisely that. The foundation on which tacos are built had sloughed onto our plates. What was left?


First we denied anything was amiss. Then we balked, and, finally, we rationalized. That first halcyon visit, we had come at around four when hardly anyone had been here (this second time it was 1pm). The cook must have had the time to take real care with the food, and probably there had been a different cook. Maybe they normally use fresh tortillas, but ran out today. Yes, yes, the lunchtime rush, the cook, that must be it. The experience, no, it was real, surely.


Meanwhile, we were busy with the wait staff, maintaining our own delusion, or maybe the restaurant’s, I’m really not sure any more. How is everything? Oh, good--no, delicious! The performance of enthusiasm that flares up in the friction between professionally doting waiters and polite customers can get a bit scary. The line between cheeriness and violence feels thin. The same unnaturally widened eyes could belong to someone yelling “good, I’m glad you like it!” at you or to someone stabbing you with a chef’s knife. I’m grateful whenever the fervor dies down.

Then came the flan. It more or less broke my mind. It came with a purple orchid, which my companion optimistically took as a personal gift from our waitress. If the flan was a part of this gift, it was the most mixed signal I’ve ever received. Of course, as it is with mixed signals, I wasn’t sure what part of it came from myself. Settling a slightly warm chunk of creamy custard onto my tongue with a spoon, I was given a wave of nausea. Whence? The texture was lovely, the flavor was at once strong caramel and smooth milk, and it was sweet but not overpoweringly sweet. I put another morsel in my mouth, and felt instantly gravitated toward the floor. It was perfect, yet I was not inhaling it, I was choking it down. I wanted to throw it back up, yet I ate my entire share of it. Our waitress glowingly asked us “how is the flan?” I must have looked stunned and indecisive, like a squirrel getting run down by a car. Thankfully, my companion swooped in to say “bliss”. I wasn’t sure if this was intended for our dessert or for the girl who served it to us, who seemed satisfied with the answer and went on her merry way.


I hardly remember the bill, or even going out the door. Eating there had sunk me deep into an epistemological crisis.


Ratings


The Taco: 3/5 (Some of the time, if you're sufficiently deluded, it goes beyond taconess to become something equally beautiful, the rest of the time it's a mediocre taco.)


Accoutrement: 1/5 (There are no salsas--only that which is already in the taco.)


Value: 2/5 ($2.75 a taco at the very cheapest, and just down the road better tacos can be had for $1.50.)


Overall: 2.5/5