Austin Club Salad: Smoked chicken, bacon, avocado. Carrot shreds, hard boiled eggs, cucumber, cheese, tomato, peppers and red onions.

The salad saga continues…  I’m always looking for low-cal alternatives for lunch. Hot Tip: Try front loading your meals with more calories in the daytime and less at night- probably more realistic way (with cardio & no donuts) to lose weight while you are pumping away at the office.

Thundercloud Subs

Austin Club Salad is pretty good.  Hearty and healthy, bacon and smoked chicken make for a nice combination especially with avocado.  I always get the Thundersauce- vinegar & oil with paprika (or cayenne-  not sure but it’s got some kick), extra pickle wedges and a few jalapenos or banana peppers.  They actually charge extra for each individual pepper which I think is extremely silly.  After a bag of chips and tax you’re lookin at $8 or $9.  I was feeling obligated to tip- especially for the things I’m about to say.

I’ve been frequenting Thundercloud for a few years now.  It has cool atmosphere, weird stuff on the walls, and, of course, the staff is a hoot- their music always kicks me into an acid flashback panic attack- usually there’s a Grateful Dead roadie making my sub.

The ingredients are decent – BUT really hit & miss.  One time around the Holidays, I think I got some tainted lettuce and literally was so sick that I browned my bed mattress…I’d like to thank ATX Furniture for the replacement.  If you need a good mattress go see Borelli.

At Thundercloud you are often victim of the person making your sub.  If too stoned or too angry, they will screw up just like Subway or any other “hands-on” pube-dispensing lunch facility.  You must be very descriptive and monitor their every move.  When you walk up and you say, “SALAD”, and they go for the bread, you are already in trouble- Terry Schiavo could toss a better looking salad than what you are about to get.

wiiite...Ohhh...Weeet!

The Bacon is real, thick, smoky and fresh.  The avocado is very good and consistent.  The salad is typical iceberg shreds. The red onions are great for bad breath and no taste- virtually useless in my opinion.

They do take the time to give you ½ of a hard boiled egg- I kind of like this, but then again this could also be the reason I got sick & my body went into toxic shock a few years ago.

Again, I’m not pointing my finger at Thundercloud…but…Let me revisit this really quick…You see on that fine day, Casey Jones was BLASTING- the dude making my sub was sweating and he wiped of his cutting knife on his bib (had a Jiffy Lube logo on it) almost like he was wiping blood off his sword in battle…

Employee of The Month: December

It just did NOT look sanitary.  Not to mention his cigarette-crusted fingernails and bong resin on his forefinger made me think that the food inspector was literally “out to lunch”.  So, I GOT SICK, and NO, I don’t think it was the 6,000 beers I drank that night…IT HAD TO BE THEIR FAULT!

Anyway, Thundercloud has been making Austin happy for years.  For all of us, whether we’re eating at Buffet Palace and we see some kid launch snot all over the serving spoons or we see a meth head sweat onto our tomatoes, it’s just the chances we take when served food by our fellow human beings.

Side note:
The Nada Chicken Salad (made with Panda meat) is also good, get those on the salad.  The “nada” is weird- they microwave these Good Year tire patties…It’s fun to see them burn their fingers while trying to cut them.  Makes me want to say “so how much do you make an hour again?”…That’s high risk pay in some jobs!

TacoBlob

Taco Taco Cafe
145 E. Hildebrand – San Antonio, Texas 78212 | (210) 822.9533

Perhaps by now you’ve heard of the taco phenomenon that is Taco Taco Cafe, a modest little taco shack out in San Antonio that has garnered nationwide attention and acclaim. Bon Appetit, in a Best American Restaurants series, crowned the Mexican mainstay as having the “Best Breakfast Taco in America”; Food Network concurred, awarding the Cafe “Best Tacos in America” (beating out Atlanta’s Taqueria Del Sol and South Beach Bar & Grill in Ocean Beach, CA);

Even Details magazine has thrown in their two centavos, designating the morning fare “Best Breakfast in America.”

Now, clearly Mexican food in general is the best type of breakfast food. Look at the citywide incredulity and panic generated by the infamous freeze of 2006, when you couldn’t get a breakfast taco. In Austin, Hell had officially frozen. So, Details saying that Taco Taco has the “Best Breakfast in America” isn’t rocking the boat too much. However, two major epicurean experts declare that Taco Taco Cafe has the “Best Taco in America”?? (breakfast and otherwise?) That’s no laughing matter. I mean, fights have been fought over much, much less, especially in the Tex-Mex Capital of the World. Thus, I decided to see for myself if the proclamations rang true. Twice, just for good measure.

As I’m vegetarian, I have two breakfast benchmarks upon which I base my verdict: migas and huevos rancheros. As long as I’ve lived in Austin, Maria’s Taco Xpress has always had the best migas breakfast taco, hands down. And I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Z’Tejas (downtown), though losing points for actually being a restaurant rather than a taco shack or stand, has the best huevos rancheros. So, at Taco Taco Café, I tried both. And was profoundly disappointed by both. The first time around I had both a migas taco and a chilaquiles taco (which more closely approximates the migas taco at Maria’s), and both were quite lackluster in flavor. The one redeeming factor was the homemade tortillas, which were actually the best I’ve ever had. The corn tortillas are as thick as the flour tortillas, and they were both fresh as a spring chicken. The second time around, I was less disappointed, but still not ready to apply any superlatives to anything I ate, especially not the salsa. Everyone knows that if the chips and salsa aren’t good, there is little chance of redemption. And they were not. The huevos rancheros did actually gain points for being quite authentic, something that the same dish at Z’Tejas lacks; but, although preparation and presentation are key, they are no substitute for flavor.

To be fair: the Norteño Taco is what actually won Taco Taco Café the Number 14 taco out of 63 designation in the December 2006 issue of Texas Monthly. So maybe it’s just that I’m not a meat-eater, and that’s what the hundreds of people who line up outside and shuffle through the tiny café each morning get that I’m missing. Taco Taco’s motto is “So good they named it twice,” after all. But is it? I say Bon Appétit, Details, and Food Network should have thought twice before they gave their hearts away. Next time you’re in San Antonio, try it out and le me know: should I reconsider my foolish notion?

Taco Taco Cafe on Yelp>

editors note: Please give a warm welcome to our newest Taco Town contributor, Jenny J. (She’ll get an official taco-related pseudonym pretty soon, but for now its just Jenny). In the coming months Jenny will offer a much needed female viewpoint to the Austin Taco Lifestyle, plus, she’s a vegetarian, so she’ll focus on all those green things that we dudes scrape off our meat-lovers’. Enjoy!

I know. You’ve been distracted at work lately, wracked with frustration as you strive to figure out the six degrees of separation between Taco Town and Kevin Bacon. Now, you can rest easy and get back to staving off boredom with other NSFW activities, because I have the answer:

I(1) just got back from India. Before leaving, I contacted Taco Town(2) about contributing to the blog, and had high hopes of finding some curried cousin of the taco out East to write home about. Unfortunately, I wasn’t eating too much street food, and found nothing of the sort. (Dal wrapped up in naan doesn’t count.) But, upon my return from India(3) , I randomly encountered the recipe for an Indian-style burrito(4) , posted below for your enjoyment. And as you well know, burritos and tacos(5) are closely related brood in the Tex-Mex family. So, even though I can’t write about some amazing taco I had in India, I can at least relate the trip to tacos via the Bollywood burrito.

Oh, and Kevin Bacon(6) . He sat in front of me(1) during a burlesque show at the old downtown Alamo Drafthouse a few months ago. So I guess there are only three degrees of separation between Taco Town and Kevin Bacon, with me in the middle. But had I revealed the direct connection, you wouldn’t have acquired this Delhicious recipe. Nor would you have realized that tacos could have a Hindi hermano.

But now you know. So, after all that useless information, here is the whole point of this post:

INDIAN-STYLE BLACK BEAN BURRITO RECIPE