Thursday, July 30, 2015

My Year With Marvel: Tiny Deadpool's Taco Tour

Early this month, I headed on down to America for my birthday. The United States, unlike my part of Canada, is littered with Mexican restaurants. You can’t go very far without running into a quality purveyor of tacos, and I decided to take full advantage of this by going on as full-on a taco tour of Fargo, North Dakota as one can in two days.

I brought Tiny Deadpool, of course. Dude loves tacos. How could I even think of leaving him out?

Tiny Deadpool, a bobblehead covered in a red bodysuit and brandishing a gun and a katana, stands in a pile of tortilla chips. In front of him are two catfish tacos topped with jalapenos, lime wedges, and creamy sauce.

Tiny Deadpool and I began our quest for tacos at an unlikely venue: Famous Dave’s, a barbeque joint that recently added “urban tacos” to their lunch menu. I’m a sucker for their catfish (which shows to best advantage on a po’boy, though catfish fingers are also delish), so of course I had to get the catfish tacos.

Each one contained a goodly amount of crispy baked catfish, plus greens, spicy remoulade, jalapenos, and lime. (The last time I had these, the chef put the lime wedges in the tacos, which was weird and uncalled for. Thankfully, this chef knew enough to stick ‘em on the side so I could just squeeze the juice on.) Tiny Deadpool and I both approved.

A circular sign is attached perpendicular to a brick building. It reads 'Vinyl Taco Bar' and features a gold arrow pointing at the building.

Our next stop was Vinyl Taco, a place we happened to drive past as we entered Fargo’s historic downtown. I love music. I love tacos. There was no way I was gonna pass this joint by.

Tiny Deadpool stands behind two soft tacos in paper serving boats. The closer taco contains beef topped with julienned radish and green sauce, while the further taco is crispy fish garnished with red slaw and green sauce.

It was everything I hoped it would be. The inside is all uncovered brick, music-themed artwork, and atmospheric lighting, spiced up with classic rock played on a turntable behind the bar. It’s my new favourite place on earth. If I lived in Fargo, I would eat there every week.

Luckily, Vinyl Taco’s tacos lived up to the window dressing. I had the carne asada with plenty of julienned radish (divine!), along with a crispy fish taco packed with red slaw and spicy lime sauce. It was a miracle of flavour and texture. A miracle.

Tiny Deadpool stands behind a large chimichanga swimming in red sauce. It's topped with streaks of creamy white sauce and a small pile of green onions.

My mother, with whom I traveled, had a chimichanga. It was a bit too spicy for her tastes, but Tiny Deadpool was happy because chimichanga is fun to say.

Chimichanga.
Chimichanga.
Chimichanga.

See?

Tiny Deadpool stands behind a large, red-bordered plate entirely covered by two hard tacos, one soft taco, and a pile of Spanish rice.

Finally, we headed to a place called Paradiso because they give you a free meal on your birthday and like hell was I gonna pass that up. I ordered the taco platter, of course: two hard tacos (one chicken; one beef) and one soft taco, garnished with Spanish rice, lettuce, and a pool of refried beans.

Friends, it defeated me. Much as I'd like to say my appetite for tacos knows no bounds, three is my usual per-meal limit--and it’s not totally obvious in the photo, but each of those hard tacos was double sized. It was the taco mother lode.

I managed to down both hard tacos alongside my delicious lemonade margarita, but I could only eat about a third of the soft taco and I lapsed into a food coma pretty soon after we got back to the hotel. Tacos, dude. They’re delicious, but they’ll most likely betray you in the end.

Tiny Deadpool can relate to that.

I also intended to go to this place called Taco Shop, but I looked their menu up online first to make sure they actually had quality food, and GUESS WHAT THEY DIDN'T HAVE.

Yeah. For real.

Much as I'd like to hope they just left tacos off the menu because they were too obvious to bother stating, I wasn't willing to risk it. I left town without visiting. Maybe next time.

6 comments:

  1. It sounds like a taco extravaganza and now, predictably, I am hungry for tacos. And I can't have them because although there is a taco truck near my work allegedly, I have made a budget rule that I can't have fancy lunch unless it is for a social reason, which means no taco truck food, only salad and avocadoes. Which I was VERY CONTENT WITH before all these pictures of tacos showed up.

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    1. Friend, you need to grab a coworker and network over taco truck tacos. It's the only solution.

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  2. Replies
    1. Tacos are the best answer to this problem!

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  3. I know this post is way old but OH MAN these are some quality-looking tacos, especially those first catfish ones. I want them in my stomach pronto.

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    1. I want them in my stomach, too. You don't often see catfish here, and it's my favourite. Especially when it's tucked into tacos or po'boys. If you're ever in Grand Central Station, the Cajun place off in the corner does a mean catfish po'boy.

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