Options abound, from a cheery repurposed shipping container near Tunney’s Pasture to a Lowertown eatery with too many tequilas to mention.
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Mi Amor Tacos
Open: Tuesday to Thursday 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
During that most recent burst of warm, summery weather, we had an unbeatable time hanging out and eating in the Bullman Street parking lot that Mi Amor Tacos calls home.
We sat at one of several shaded picnic tables, near the shipping container converted into a kitchen where the Salazar sisters have worked since they opened in mid-May.
The choices here were limited to what the Salazar’s cramped workspace can currently put out — one beef taco, two made with pork, a chicken taco and a “soy meat” option. I can vouch for all but the latter.
Best — meaning juiciest and most flavourful — was the beef brisket “suadero” ($6.50), thanks to an abundance of tender meat that had been braised in its rendered fat. The fried pork carnitas ($6.50) and pineapple-enhanced “al pastor” pork ($6.50) were also fine, even if the latter had not been spit-roasted as is typically the case.
I normally shun chicken tacos as too dry and under-flavoured, but Mi Amor’s rendition ($6) was exceptionally good.
I told Gloria Salazar, a former bank employee who recently beat breast cancer and then decided to open Mi Amor with her sister, that in my opinion, while it isn’t hard to make OK tacos, it’s hard to know what they should really taste like. The expat from the Mexican state of Puebla smiled and agreed.
“We try to do it the original way,” she said, pointing to the minimal garnishes of cilantro and chopped onion and her stand’s house-made salsas.
She said her tacos were “like a snack, not like a real dinner,” although that stuffed feeling I had after sharing three tacos made me beg to differ. Mi Amor’s tacos were so generously laden that at each visit I split the heaps of meat over the two tacos beneath them, effectively generating six tacos for the price of three.
While Mi Amor offers just five proteins, the sisters offer them in other dishes beyond tacos, including burritos and sandwiches. A hefty beef brisket sandwich ($13.09) that also included lettuce, tomato, cheese and pickled jalapenos was as awesome as anticipated. Also worth ordering again was a plate of four crispy, deep-fried chicken tacos ($16.50).
Despite being an outdoor restaurant in Ottawa, Mi Amor plans to open year-round. It will also do its own deliveries rather than pass Uber Eats or DoorDash fees on to its customers, Gloria Salazar said.
Her culinary standards, along with the relaxed, welcoming vibe of her parking lot eatery, make Mi Amor my favourite among the taco eateries I’ve recently tried.
That said, there are different reasons to visit the taquerias below.
La Vaca Mexicana
Open: daily noon to 9 p.m.
Access: steps up to dining area
In Spanish, “la vaca” means “the cow,” and at La Vaca Mexicana, which opened this year on Gladstone Avenue west of Bronson Avenue, the best tacos, all priced at just $5 each, featured different cuts of beef.
The suadero brisket tacos were fine, if not as fantastically succulent as what I had at Mi Amor. Cachete tacos offered an appealing combination of crusty and pliant morsels of beef cheek. Chunks of beef tongue were light and pillowy. Carne asada (steak) tacos were flavourful and more tender than examples I’ve had elsewhere.
Quesabirria tacos (stewed beef folded with melted cheese into a lightly grilled tortilla, served with a bowl of broth for dipping) were quite good, although if you read on, you’ll learn of the spot that I think makes even better quesabirria tacos. Birria soup ($15), with tortillas on the side, was another way to savour beef and soup, putting the emphasis on the latter.
Tacos starring fried shrimp ($9) and fried fish ($9) are available at La Vaca on weekends. While the shrimp taco was well-made and tasty, the too-mild fish taco underwhelmed.
La Vaca is not licensed. But it does serve Mexican Coca-Cola and other Mexican soft drinks, as well as house-made beverages including horchata, a lightly spiced, sweet rice-milk drink that I quite like, and agua frescas including jamaica, a tea of sorts made with dried hibiscus flowers.
The ambience here isn’t much to speak of, but I’m not complaining, given $5 tacos that punch above their weight.
El Taco De Oro
Open: Tuesday and Wednesday 4 to 9 p.m., Thursday and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
In 2019 in Lowertown, El Taco De Oro took over from the St. Patrick Street eatery that had been Angelo’s Pizza since the mid-1980s. Valeria Oropeza, who had worked at Angelo’s since the summer of 2018, stepped up after the owner of Angelo’s retired, and now her father, who is from the Mexican state of Tabasco, runs the kitchen, despite not having previously worked in restaurants.
“All my back-of-house staff is from Mexico,” Oropeza wrote me. While her mother is from Mexico City and her father is from Tabasco, the restaurant’s cooks are from all parts of their homeland, and recipes have been tweaked accordingly, she says.
Mind you, you can still get pizzas, both classic and Mexican-influenced, on weekends at El Taco De Oro if you’re nostalgic.
The dining room is cosy — almost half of it is taken up by an eight-seat bar well-stocked with tequila — and the ambience is colourful, woody and festive.
Despite the restaurant’s name, its multi-page menu teems with much more than tacos, with room for Tex-Mex-ish pub grub on one hand and pricier fish and shrimp main courses on the other. The latter did make me curious, and I wonder now if they reflect the diversity of Mexican expats in the kitchen. But when we visited last month, we had tacos in mind.
Here, we tried three pork options — cochinita pibil, al pastor and chorizo and cheese — and these three-for-$15 choices hit the spot. We certainly didn’t think them worse than the slightly chewy steak (carne asada) taco or the shrimp taco, which were each a dollar more than the pork options.
The tacos struck us as solidly made and eminently affordable, and gave us reasons to return, as did the well-stocked bar.
Rosalita
2 rue Aubry, Gatineau (Hull sector), 819-205-1050,
Open: Tuesday to Friday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday 4 to 9 p.m., closed Sunday, Monday
Rosalita in Gatineau’s Hull sector is the only one of these four taquerias that isn’t Mexican-owned and -run. But the French-Canadian operators at this tiny, hipster-y, retro hole-in-the-wall make tacos (each $6.50) their way, which is to say with care and in plain view of customers who like open-kitchen action.
Rosalita gets props, first of all, for being the only taqueria in this batch that makes its own corn tortillas, and you can taste the freshness.
A chicken taco here was just all right. The pork belly taco had more going for it, and the clear winner was the quesabirria taco of stewed beef. None of the tacos was as generously loaded with meat, though, as their counterparts at the taquerias discussed above.
Crisp, cleanly fried churros, beers and cocktails made Rosalita a place where you might want to linger after your taco needs have been met.
