When you’re trying to live work on your fitness and get rid of your persistent lonjas, you have to change your eating habits- which means you have to sacrifice many, if not all of your favorite dishes. Tacos are among the must-not-eat list, as delicious as they are, you need to work the treadmill for about twenty minutes to burn the calories in one measly taco. Now, every once in a while we must spoil ourselves and eat something we really like other than bland salads, and again tacos seem to be many people’s weak spot. In my never ending quest of trying to find a healthy(er) alternative to the popular taco stands I came across “Taco Mesa”.
For sure…
There is no doubt que en gustos se rompen géneros, but for us Latinos used to the good (usually fried) stuff, healthy food tastes rather insipid and as good as it might be, no le llega ni a los talones a la comida a la cuál estamos acostumbrados.
That’s why we have such a hard time adjusting our taste buds to healthier foods. The demand for healthy meals keeps growing and with it, healthy food joints keep popping up… some serve questionable food, some are questionable, many of them are ok, and just a few are memorable— you can find “Taco Mesa” in the latter category.
Even though “Taco Mesa” is a chain of restaurants, the food and service are not the same as those in other “chains”.
Surprising menu
If you go to “Taco Mesa” expecting to find the standard Mexican food menu, you’re in for a few surprises. Sure, you’ll find a couple of “classic” dishes, but it is the rest of the menu lo que dejará a muchos con la boca abierta… especially after taking a look at the kinds of tacos they serve.
Now, if you’re a taco connoisseur or simply a taco addict, you know that most of the time the best tacos are those “old-school tacos a la mexicana”— the ones in the loncheras, the ones that you have to eat standing up, the ones that keep everything nice and simple: tortilla, your meat of choice, cebolla, cilantro, and lots of salsa… anything else seems superfluous. The idea of including other elements is just ludicrous, even blasphemous.
The thing with “Taco Mesa” is that you are gonna have to leave all your previous experiences with “experimental” and “Americanized” tacos at the door.
Although they serve the typical carnitas, asada, and al pastor tacos, it is the other selections that seem more appealing.
It only took a couple of minutes for me and my partner in crime to choose what we were going to be sampling: “calamari tacos”, “salmon taco”, and “tacos de cangrejo”. But first, we wanted to start with an old classic “tacos al pastor”.
Los “tacos al pastor” were just how we were expecting them to be: delicious… the meat, onion and pineapple chunks were cooked and seasoned almost perfectly.
We love tacos, and we love calamari… but calamari tacos never even crossed our mind- not even in our wildest dreams. So when our “calamari tacos” arrived we were more than excited to take a bite. They were served on blue and red corn tortillas, with chipotle sauce, cheese, cabbage relish (algo parecido al curtido de las pupusas), and of course sour cream. It might have been the calamari itself or the cabbage relish and the chipotle sauce, but whatever it was, it worked… “calamari tacos” are A MUST for any taco addict out there.
I’m not a huge fan of fish (no pun intended), so I was a bit skeptical when it came to giving a fair chance to the salmon taco without being biased. The “salmon taco” has charbroiled salmon on a flour tortilla topped with papaya butter sauce and papaya relish. It has a bitter sweet taste to it that goes very well with the taste of the salmon. Definitely not your typical deep fried fish taco.
To finish off with our taco extravaganza, terminamos con una orden de “tacos de cangrejo”. Surprisingly for us, these came as a full meal: mini flour tacos filled with lump crab sautéed with mango habanero cream sauce, dressed with cabbage and mango relish, served with a side of cilantro rice, and slices of jicama, cucumber and orange. These came up to be a different alternative to the oh-so-famous “tacos dorados”, but taken to a whole different level, just the relish itself makes it worth ordering them. Kudos for the cilantro rice; if you can, start off your meal with a side order of this… you won’t regret it.
Siempre hay espacio para el postre
Even after stuffing our faces with a bunch of scrumptious tacos, we couldn’t resist trying their “cheesecake flan”.
It’s not flan, it’s not cheesecake— it’s both!!! It will probably be the least healthy part of your meal, but who cares?! It’s flan!
“Taco Mesa” indeed offers healthy and authentic Mexican food with a twist… definitely more authentic than healthy, but enticing nonetheless.
Taco Mesa (@ Saddleback Plaza)
3533 E. Chapman Ave.,
Orange, CA 92869
(714) 633-3922
