Post-Procession Taqueria Vallarta Report - SF

After the Day of the Dead Procession last night, I went for a few tacos at Taqueria Vallarta on 24th St. The place was pretty packed, but they were doing a reasonably good job serving the mass of people. The meat taco station had a separate line from everything else, with a woman taking money and filling drink orders....those who wanted anything besides that had to wait in the other, longer, line.

Last night's meat selection was different than my previous visit. They had: carnitas, lengua, sesos, suadero, al pastor, carne asada and chicken. The last five were all on the main grill together, and the carnitas and lengua were on a separate platter. This is not a great place for people who care about mixing meats....all of the juices from the meats were all flowing into each other, and the tortillas were heated in the middle of the grill.

I had 3 tacos: 1 pollo, 1 al pastor, 1 suadero.

The chicken and suadero were good. The chicken was in small cubes and was nice and tender - not as flavorful as the carne asada that I had had on my previous visit. The suadero was also good, pretty tender, still not as much flavor/spice as the carne asada. The al pastor was the biggest disappointment - I found it too sweet, and it seemed to almost have an orange sweet and sour sauce on it. None of the tacos were as good as the buche tacos I had two weeks ago at the same place.

Since things were so crazy, they were running out of things like limes and cilantro, but they were grilling onions on the grill w/ all the meats, and those were great with the tacos. Normally, things at Taqueria Vallarta are busy but not crazy - so this experience was atypical. But it was nice to see that the quality was, for the most part, still there on such a crazy busy night.

Dave MP