Taco Trucks

Loving street food has become a foodie cliche, thanks to the stylings of Anthony Bourdain, who has at long last confirmed that, yes, one can be both gritty and pretentious. The world had been wondering since the Marquis de Sade first raised the possibility. I like each equally. But, cliche aside, street food can be very, very good, and some of the best can be had from taco trucks. Spokane currently has a bounty of taco trucks. The question is, which is worth your time?

In the past week or so, I have been to the four trucks nearest to downtown. I ordered tacos, and when I could talk Jeremy into having mexican food again (it's not his favorite cuisine, even though we met in a Mexican restaurant and he lived in San Francisco, home of the Mission burrito), I ordered a burrito. I made sure to try the rice and beans at each place. The menus at all the trucks are pretty similar: tacos, burritos, enchiladas, tostadas, sopas, and tortas ( kind of sandwich/Mexican sloppy joe). They all have a similar selection of meats: chicken, pork, a couple of beefs, chorizo, and -- a surprise to me -- lengua, or beef tongue, which is excellent. The texture is a little like pot roast. The good news is, all four trucks are all pretty darn good. I do, of course, have some favorites and some observations.

Patty's Taco Truck, on Division just north of Garland/Empire. Of the four I visited, this is my favorite, even if the truck itself is pretty, shall we say, low impact. Their pico de gallo is wonderfully fresh and lively, the guacamole is creamy and abundant, and the refried beans are wonderful, clearly the best of any of the trucks I tried. There are (I read on-line -- not the most rock solid research I have ever done) two Pattys who co-own the truck. The woman working the counter when I was there (Patty the niece, I believe) was incredibly pleasant, and told me that they have only been open since June. On her suggestion, I tried an enchilada, which was elevated by a lovely hit of salty lime.

Tacos Tumbras: On Division, just north of Rowan. I believe there is in fact a Tumbras chain, including at least one other truck out in the valley, and a sit down restaurant. The tacos are lovely, the refried beans well seasoned, and if you prefer some texture in your refried beans, you might even prefer theirs to Patty's, which are very smooth. The pork burrito was lovely, with tender meat and a great spicy kick. I am dinging them for very bad chicken, which was rubbery, not carefully cut up, and flavorless. (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of this one.)

Tacos el Sol: This very fancy truck is parked downtown, in a parking lot on Washington in between Sprague and First. The great news about this place is that it is open both for business lunch and for late night cravings: they are open until 3 am! Again, very good tacos, especially the beef, but the refried beans taste canned, and the salsa lacked punch and freshness. Also, as one might expect from the fancy digs, this was the most expensive of the trucks I hit, although only by a fraction of a dollar.

El Mariachi, located on Hamilton and Augusta, just north of Mission. I will admit, this was my fourth truck, and I was getting more and more adventurous. Here, I tried both the tongue and the beef cheeks, and both were excellent. The barbacoa (beef braised in chile sauce) was, in comparison, mushy and uninteresting. The burrito was Jeremy's favorite, because he prefers pinto beans to refried, but I found it bland. The big disappointment was the rice and beans, which in texture was like a Cuban rice and beans, but without the flavor. Also, as much as I appreciate the cheeky, musical theme of the truck, I was put off by the fact that you couldn't see inside to see the food prep at all, and by the length of my wait. Still, it's proximity to work means that I'm likely to return.

There are a lot of arguments to be made about taco trucks. Some say that they are an easy way for a business owner to play fast and loose with all sorts of rules that should not be played with: food safety laws, worker's benefits, even taxes. I'm sure this can happen, but I think Patty's Tacos is an example of the other side of the argument. This is a low capital way for someone to become a small business owner. To me, this sounds like a venture worth supporting. So, go out and be brave. And if they have named some of their tacos, those are the ones to get. Otherwise, try the tongue!

Bad waiter

I ate at Cafe Marron over the weekend, and it wasn't the best experience I've had there. I like Cafe Marron, even if I do find the name unfortunate, since it seems like the only options for pronouncing it are either to make it sound like Cafe Moron or to sound pretentiously French. Even they seem to struggle with the name; when they opened, they had it spelled one way on their sign and another on their menus. Nonetheless, I like the casual atmosphere, I like the brunch food a lot (especially now that Bittersuite is gone and, from what I have heard, will be reopening prohibitively far from my house), and I have had really good meals there.

I remember one dinner, a little over a year ago, with particular fondness. The waiter not so subtly steered us toward the halibut and the top sirloin. It took no arm twisting to get me to order the halibut, a fish I adore. It arrived perfectly cooked, in that sublime nano-second when there is still a hint of translucency in the center, and in a light, citrusy cream sauce that complemented the fish without taking it over. The top sirloin was a harder sell. After all, that is no one's favorite steak, and badly done, it can be chewy, mealy, chalky, or any of the other bad beef dwarves. But, when a good waiter recommends something, you trust him (in this case, it was a him), so . . . The sirloin was also sublime: beefy and and almost meltingly tender, with a terrific sear. In fact, the beef was so good by itself that I have forgotten if it came with a sauce, and I can remember nearly every sauce I have ever tasted. Good food, good service, good atmosphere -- this was an experience to cement a restaurant in my firmament for a while.

Things were very different this weekend, and it wasn't that the food that made the difference. It was the service. Our waitress was a very nice woman on her second day, and I wish her well in her new job. I see no reason why she can't become a fine waitress. But, she wasn't for us. I want to be very clear here: I don't blame her. Service is an art form, and one so rarely practiced in Spokane that I wonder if most of the people trying to be good servers have actually experienced good service. Waiting tables, even at its most straightforward, requires an enormous amount of multi-tasking, organization, presence of mind, knowledge of the menu, of the wine list, of what the kitchen will and will not accommodate, plus tact and people skills. It is a hard, hard job, and one that takes a full apprenticeship to master.

No, I don't blame her. I blame the management. It was their decision to put a woman with little to no waiting experience on the floor on a weekend night. It was their decision not to give her a lesson in the menu with the chef, allowing her to taste all the plates on the menu. This is, by the way, standard practice in nearly all fine dining restaurants. It was their decision not to have her shadow an experienced waiter, who probably would have remembered to bring the salads before the entries. And let us remember, the management of Cafe Marron is the same as the management of Luna, so these are experienced restaurant people who ought to know better. They surely know standard industry practice in hiring and training wait staff, and they certainly ought to know the importance of service in a successful restaurant. This shows more than a momentary lapse on their part. This shows a failure of priorities.

I'll go farther than that. I think this is an ethical issue. Sure, it shows a complete lack of respect for the diners who are paying up to twenty dollars a plate and have, therefore, a reasonable expectation that what they asked to be on that plate will, in fact, be there. But, more than that, a waiting job is typically a minimum wage job, and therefore all servers rely on tips to earn a living income. Hiring a person and then not giving them the tools they need to earn the income you have told them they can expect is dirty pool, in my book. (Washington State, thankfully, both has the highest minimum wage in the country and does not have the exemption for tip earners that many states have, so the situation is not as dire here in Spokane as it is some places.)

Service tends to be bad in Spokane. We tend to accept friendly in lieu of skilled (not that the too are mutually exclusive). I had dinner at Gordy's a few weeks ago, and the our waitress knew the menu inside and out, and guided us toward ordering a great meal. But, she seemed to think that we wanted to spend our evening talking with her, when in fact I was with a group of people who did just fine creating conversation all by ourselves. It ranged from awkward to horribly uncomfortable. Wild Sage is a notable exception; I have never gotten anything but top notch service there. Luna is a, maybe the, prime culprit. There service would be great for a Denny's or a sandwich place, but not for a restaurant that charges thirty bucks a plate, a la carte. We will never have a real restaurant scene until service becomes a priority, both for restaurant owners and diners. The catch-22 is, we can't protest bad service without hurting innocent, individual servers. So, here's a call to owners and managers: train your servers. Send them to good restaurants in other cities to experience their craft. Teach them about the food they serve. (I know of one restaurant in Tacoma that sends their entire staff to Italy for a week each year to gain in knowledge and experience. Tacoma, people! Are they that much better than we are?) As for us, let's demand more than nice. We deserve it.