S.A.T.C 2010

No, this isn't a post about Carrie or one of her whiny friends. I'm here to talk to you about LIFE and what's real: Santa.Ana.Taco.Crawl, HOLLA-day inn (i love that line paestry!)! I hadn't done one of these in a while, and I made sure to do quick run beforehand to work up the appetite and rockin my gym shorts with the expandable waistline. Some quick shoutouts:

-Gratitude to Elmo and Gustavo, and everyone else from stickaforkinit who provided the necessary info from their blogs.

-Much love to my adventurous friends who braved the heat with me and persevered to five spots + dessert. Special thanks to the young and up and coming Jomo (who can bake bread in your rice cooker, biatch!) who took all the pictures, drove, and made it to the bonus round.

This year's taco crawl is brought to you in part by:

And now, with the formalities out of the way, I introduce to you Harry Potter and the Santa Ana Taco Crawl.

The secret list.

Marauder's Map.

Amuse bouche.

A. Alebrije's Grill. The owner (?) was quite a friendly guy who enthusiastically described his product and some of his favorite items. We ordered a Taco Acorazado to share and sat down on some plastic crates outside the pink truck.

This thing was bananas. A freshly made tortilla(so good), beans, rice, thin pounded breaded beef steak, tomatoes, onions, avocados, and a sprinkle of cotija cheese with some cactus on the side. We liberally added some hot carrots and some of the tasty salsas, and this was quite a delicious meal. I was tempted to order another for myself, but we had places to go and tacos to see!

B. El Gallo Giro.

Dayammmm!!!! A perfect remedy for the heat.

Sandia, tamarindo, horchata. I enjoyed my watermelon very much.

We ordered the Torta Cubana to share. Ham, spicy pork, beef steak, and headcheese all stuffed with veggies on their own freshly baked mexican bun, which was a bit airy although my piece had significantly less bread than the other two. A monster.

They also make baked goods and were giving out free samples of their tres leches cake. Amiga made the comparison of this place to Lee's Sandwiches.

C. Taqueria Tapatia

Here we each ordered an al pastor taco. Overall, it wasn't great, but it was above average imo although the others didn't seem to like it too much. No picture, but they make a pretty damn good melon aqua fresca.

D. I'm still not sure if this place is called Torta Ahogada or Chiva Torta. I had visited this place on the last run I did.

We ordered their specialty, the torta ahogada and split it three ways. This looked a lot more naked than the last time I had it although I suppose I could have added the pico and what not myself. The bread was like an crunchy baguette and I think the filling was pork though honestly, I have trouble telling the difference sometimes. Also inside was some beans and onions. Being a pansy, I requested it to be "media" so that slow burning sauce didn't drown the sandwich completely. Definitely a different kind of torta and one worth trying.

To aid digestion, we walked around the adjacent Northgate Market and picked up some mexican candy.

Also D. El Rincon de Sabor. We went on a bit of a wild goose chase for this one. We saw a truck a few feet away but didn't see a name. After some turkey jivin and some wild turkey shots though, we headed back and saw the name on the other side. I laughed so hard at my dumb mistake that I walked into a pole. I cried for a bit, then I laughed some more.

We saw that this place offered the acorazado too, so we had to try it out to compare. While overall, this was a pretty decent taco, it fell short of Alebrije's Grill. The tortilla didn't seem hand made and more oily (seemed lightly fried). There were also no beans and other veggie goodies.

We didn't get to go to E, so we went straight for dessert to Natural in Anaheim.

I ordered the chamoyada. Basically apricot+chile+salt+mango shake. Read the full description here. This was a really intense drink.

Comes with a special straw!

The young eligible bachelor got a cantaloupe smoothee. Two white gloved thumbs up he sang. We then headed back home. The end. Or was it?

A few hours later after some gentle coaxing (like the guy is trying to do on the right), we met up at Bootlegger's for a beer and some more tacos for the bonus round. I thought the Dos Chinos Truck was gonna be there, but instead it was Calbi. No pics of the beer, but it seems they raised their prices a little bit and a lot of their selection is gone although I did get to try a delicious hopped up hef.

I've had this truck before once after a tipsy night in L.A. The cute worker took my order of a spicy pork and chicken taco. The chicken wasn't very good...cubed pieces that reminded me of sandwich meat. The spicy pork was better though. It had this sweet taste to it that kinda reminded me of apple juice and later on, a slow burn. I wasn't a big fan of the lettuce or cheese on it. But my friends both said they thought it was better than Kogi.

All in all, a pretty fun and successful crawl, and I didn't get sick either. +1 star. This will be my last socal post, and I think it's fitting that I go out with a bang as I'm moving up to Davis tomorrow to spend my next four years. So to end, lemme hear you say, "hotel, motel, HOLLA-day inn!" Peace love and tacos everybody!