Oh Yeah, I Like Tacos. What Else You Got?

 TACO YOLO | LITHIA

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Having found a favored spot for tasty tacos at a great price, I find myself not wanting to get tacos anywhere else. This is unfortunate because the first place we ever had tacos near the home base was at Taco YOLO, in Fishhawk. It had just recently opened then and was going through the awkward stages, but it did so with grace, gratitude, and great food.

We had an affinity for the spot and wanted to return, only with so many other places to try, we did so only once. And I had since found a place for tacos that cast shade on all others.  Gimme one reason to eat here, and I’ll turn right back around.

Okay, we already had one reason. Christa loves their quesadillas. This day, we were feeling the dinner grumbles and I suggested two options: Wayback Burgers or Taco YOLO. Both places we like, both places we hadn’t enjoyed in months, and both places share the same strip mall. Christa picked the latter, of course, or right now I’d be ranting about burgers, again. 

The Tide is High

Taco shops flood Tampa. Every suburb is a tidal pool of taquerias, Tex-Mex cantinas, trucks, trailers, shacks, and chains. From authentic Mexican to modern adaptations, the pickings are gordita. So how do you narrow it down and find a favored or simply a decent spot? Do you prioritize price, quality, style?

The struggle is real, but it helps to have inside tips. We did and they paid off (I’ll tell you about it in a later post; stay tuned.) I have found my spot for tortilla wrapped vittles and it’s about twenty minutes from home. This article is not about that spot.

We flew in on a sporty little runabout, tonight. The Taco Yolo staff were all smiles and exceptionally welcoming.  We chose a table and after admiring the nifty acrylic tops, cracked the menus. Tonight, I would find that singular dish that sets Taco YOLO adrift from the rest.

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Taco YOLO
5614 FishHawk Crossing Blvd
Lithia, FL 33547
Phone: (813) 906-9656
Hours: Sunday to Saturday – 11:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
http://tacoyolo.com/

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Christa only ever orders one entree from Taco YOLO: the quesadillas, her go-to southwestern meal. My wife absolutely loves theirs and probably didn’t even need to look at a menu when we arrived. She placed her order for the Dang Quesadilla ($11.99), chicken as the protein with refried beans and street corn as the sides. She had the option of sauces; I sang the red one, she got the white one.

I, on the other hand, had my typical bout with indecision. Lots of choices and no sense of specific cravings. But as I scrolled down and up the list, it was at this moment that I came to my conclusion: I didn’t need to get tacos ever again from Taco YOLO, or from anywhere other than my fave.

As I said, TacoYOLO makes bangin’ tacos, you’d like them. I still do. On our previous visit, I had their spicy fish tacos and they were pretty tasty. But then I found my BTF (Best Taqueria Forever). This time around I just thought: I’ve got a spot for tacos, why get them here? 

But I’m holding on

I don’t have to get them here; TacoYOLO does more than tacos. I can clean tacos from my options list and give my mind fewer things to worry about. 

So, if I wipe out tacos, what else is there? Here are the options from the main menu, sans tacos:

• Burrito – Basically the tacos wrapped in a bigger tortilla
• Quesadilla – Basically the tacos folded in a bigger tortilla and grilled
• Enchilada – Basically the tacos wrapped in a bigger tortilla, grilled, topped with enchilada sauce
• Bowl – Basically the tacos over rice and beans
• Salad – No

Hmm. Is that all there is? Tacos? Done, of course, the six extremely different ways.

Well, Fawlty, you’re not stuck. Because if you turn the page you’ll find the specials—the rotating selection of chef creations. It was here the last visit that I found the spicy fish tacos. As I scanned the list, I felt a renewed sense of hope. There was a choice here; real options.

• A pan-fried shrimp dish – I’m sort of meh on shrimp. They’re like the rice cake of the sea and I rarely find value in paying for them when dining out. I’ll house a bowl with Old Bay at home, but there’s no markup there.
• A chicken breast topped with BBQ sauce, bacon and melted cheese – This is a tasty dish but I’ve had it elsewhere, for decades. It was on the menu at Chili’s when I worked there in the nineties, but they called it Monterey Chicken. This can also be made at home in my sleep.
• A taco pizza – Basically the tacos baked on a homemade crust.
• Poblano Bombers – Now, this looked intriguing. Two poblano peppers stuffed with cheese, wrapped in a pounded chicken breast and bacon, grilled, and topped in their white and red sauce. Now we’re getting somewhere different.
• Barbecue ribs – (See: “I already have a barbecue fave”)
• Spicy fish tacos – “…white fish…batter coated with a Coppertail Night Swim Porter and panko …lightly fried.” They’re really good but been there done that.
• Shrimp Tacos – Basically the tacos with rice cake of the sea.

Clearly, you can see I only had one choice. And yes, they were basically chiles relleno inside chicken and bacon, but if you think that’s not different, then…I have no response. It’s different. And it’s certainly different from tacos. So there. I ordered the Poblano Bombers ($13.99); they came with rice and street corn.

With food out of the way, we realized a hankering for adult libations. I couldn’t make up my mind, but Christa saw cider and jumped on it. It took me ten minutes to recall that they do flights of four for $6.99. I made my choice and they arrived in a Florida-shaped rack. Working my way from the Gainesville to the Everglades was:

• Big Storm Wavemaker Amber Ale (4.9 abv) – Clearwater – A nutty brown ale. I liked it.
• Orange Blossom Honey Pilsner (5.5 abv) – Orlando – Refreshing. Goes great with Tex-Mex
• Escape Goofy Footed Wheat Ale (5.5 abv) – Trinity – Lather well while singing Happy Birthday twice
• Brew Bus You’re My Boy Blue (5.0 abv) – Tampa – Blueberry nose, slightly sour finish. Tasty

Except, there was a mistake and a cider was served instead of the Goofy Footed…

• Cigar City Homemade Apple Pie Cider (6.9 abv) – Tampa – It’s apple pie in a glass. Not quite right for Tex-Mex, maybe.

…No biggy. I had already sipped it and thought it was pretty tasty, so I decided to trudge on without complaint. I settled on the Honey Pilsner as the best pairing with my meal and as simply a tasty beer in general.

Our chips and salsa ($4.99) arrived and we dug into it, scooping up the chunky mix with the house-made and well-salted chips. The salsa was the fresh variety with a sweet finish and no heat. Christa was struggling to identify a missing something. Salt? Something sour like vinegar or lime juice?

I understood what she was feeling, but I thought it was a typical representation of a fresh concoction. And similar to what I pulse up at home in the processor with a can of tomatoes, fresh onion, a clove of garlic, chilies, and some cilantro. I do add salt and lime juice with a splash of vinegar and a pinch of sugar. Enough about my recipe, TacoYOLO’s salsa was alright and we munched up every chip in the basket with plenty of salsa left to spare.

Our entrees arrived and our server offered more chips to finish the salsa but we put a pin in it to see how we felt after the entrees. Looking at the plates, I imagined we’d be too full. Though, she did suggest we could take them home if we didn’t eat the refill; that earned some points.

You’re gonna be my number one

Wow. How do I describe what I felt when those Poblano Bombers landed before me? Oh, mi corazón. Let me just tell you what I saw.

First, they were beautifully prepared. The bacon was wrapped tightly around the pounded chicken that was in turn wrapped tight around a whole seeded poblano pepper, in turn, stuffed with a blend of cheeses. They were perfect pouches with tails of charred stem poking out the tops. Each wore a coat of the red sauce (tomato-based enchilada sauce) and the white sauce (sour cream with cilantro and garlic) was in a ramekin beside them. Seasoned rice bedded the plate beside a chargrilled ear of street corn.

Street corn is all the rage locally and, if not there already, is probably making its way to you as we speak. I’m not complaining. It’s delicious and it’s nice to have a veg option other than green beans. This preparation was hard to parse, but it was salty, buttery, herby, and generously sprinkled with crumbled white cheese.

Christa’s quesadillas looked good, but not as good as my peppers. Sorry, I was just so happy that I had made a good choice. Her plate, make that her tray, was loaded with food. The quesadilla took up the most real estate—a foot wide and half as deep, grilled to a golden brown pattern of puffed flour tortilla cut into four wedges. It was accompanied by piles of diced tomato, diced onion, sour cream, on a modicum of lettuce. A ramekin of the white sauce and an ear of street corn filled any negative space. A healthy portion of refried beans joined the tray and I knew we were going to be taking some home.

Her corn still had a horsetail of husk trailing off the tray and she wondered how she’d attack it without getting messy fingers. There was no way to avoid it. We should have requested more napkins. Mine was trimmed clean, and I offered a swap, but she was game to give it a go.

I returned my attention to the Poblano Bombers. They looked so nice, I hated to defile them, but one must if one wants to eat. One wants to eat. I sliced off the tip of the top one and exposed the dark green pepper surrounded by a thin ring of chicken and a crust of bacon. Golden cheese flowed like lava from the void. Into my mouth it went and…mmm. Hmmm. Hmmm, mmm, hmmm. All I could do was close my eyes and hum. It was that good.

The red sauce and bacon hit the tongue first, crispy outside, tender inside. The spicy smoky flavor triggered the taste buds, preparing them for the chicken, which was, of course, overwhelmed here by the poblano. The pepper was perfectly tender with a subtle heat—not tongue-searing, but a comfortable level of warmth that left plenty of neurons open for flavor. The cheese came next, still flowing hot from the oven it was rich and creamy, the perfect match for the cooked pepper.

I had expected the chicken to be little more than a casing for the good stuff. All those stronger flavors couldn’t help but obscure it, but it wasn’t totally lost. It held its own fairly well and made a meal of an overgrown appetizer. The cheese and bacon made it tantalizing.

Each slice was as good as the last, with a dip into the white sauce every other bit to mix things up. I stopped at the end of the first one, nibbling the remaining poblano flesh from the blackened stem. Then I remembered the rice. It was a good side dish of perfectly cooked white rice, separate grains, soft, but with a bite in the center, salted well with a blend of seasonings similar to adobo. I had a few forkfuls then moved to the corn.

Can’t fill up on starches yet with that corn sitting there. Yes, I know corn is a starch. Hush. I’m about to bit into this cob without knocking off all the crumbled cheese. It was soft, a hint of char from the flames, salty, sweet, some kind of herb that I couldn’t single out, maybe cilantro. The cheese was a mild queso fresco and complemented the char and the starchy sweet corn with a creamy saltiness.

I still knocked off half the cheese by lifting it, but that was okay. It went well with the rice, too.

Christa’s quesadillas were as good as she remembered them to be. There was no skimping on cheese, and each of the four slices weighed a quarter-pound. That’s four ounces of cheese and chicken in each wedge. (Yes, I weighed the one we took home. I’m eating it now. My senorita’s leftover was nipped in the bud.)

The chicken itself tasted as simple as a well-seasoned piece of grilled boneless breast, but that’s fine for marrying with the additional flavors she’d be adding from the tray. It was tender and had a taste of the open grill. It was perfect for Christa’s picky palate and she gobbled up three-quarters between messy chomps of corn from the cob.

[Editors note: Christa does not gobble or chomp.]

The refried beans were the pinto variety flavored with a common chili powder blend. They weren’t spectacular but they were above average. We’re talking about smashed beans with some seasoning.

The creamy white sauce was cool and tangy. Maybe the zing was wholly from the sour cream, but I detect lime, too. It was garlicky with a hint of cilantro, but not enough to give a soapy finish.

Its not (just) the things you do…

I was a bad boy. As soon as I finished that first poblano, I told myself to save the second one for home. I’d finish the rice and the corn, but I should not stuff myself by eating that last bomb. It wasn’t necessary. The rest of the meal was filling and satisfying enough. But I don’t like being told what to do, not even by me. So, after my corn cob was cleaned of kernels and the last grains of rice were scooped into my crop, I sliced into the second bomber.

This masterpiece should be enjoyed now, as it was meant to be—fresh from the oven, not refrigerated and microwaved. Or so I reasoned to myself. It would be improper and a slight against the cook to stick it in the fridge for later. I’d be crass to not cram it in my tum. So I did.

It wasn’t as good as the first one. Oh, it was a perfect match in all respects, but I let it sit too long and the cheese and other fats started to congeal and lose their flavor nuances. Compared to the piping hot first one, this was slightly dulled and my senses were already blasted by now, especially with that Goofy Footed.

Oh, yeah—the bartender came around to deliver the correct beer. She realized the mistake (not her fault; perfectly honest) and corrected it without my raising a peep. So, more points to them. Sadly, that Goofy Footed did not go with any of our food. Maybe it was the combination of chemicals in both the foods and the beer, like orange juice after brushing teeth. Irrespective of the causes, that wheat beer tasted like hand soap; every sip I tried. I got it down to half the glass and gave up. Besides, I was getting bloated.

I ate the whole thing; I cleared my plate. And I was feeling the swells. Christa spotted my condition and advised I apply the mouth brakes. I agreed to finish only the cider and call it quits. This had been a satisfying meal. And the prices are agreeable. Both of our entrees were less than $15 each and if we forwent the chips and adult bevs, we’d be well fed for thirty bucks and with leftovers (if I had slowed my gormandizing roll). Not too shabby, these days.

But it’s the way you do the things…

Taco YOLO is a locally owned and operated. A one-off place that looks to be a trial run for possible expansion. Either that or the owners are simply detail oriented with a focus on looking as professional as possible. Regardless, good for them and I wish them luck. They make a great product and their system seems to be nailed down. They are consistent and appear efficient.

That said, would they expand, I have reservations. With more than one kitchen to focus on, details can diminish and the product becomes mediocre. I hope that doesn’t happen here.

They claim organic ingredients and it’s likely that my go-to taco fave cannot. But it’s tacos, man, and most Mexican families eating authentic tacos in Mexico aren’t likely using organic ingredients either. Hey, they’re your values, if you feel otherwise, good on you. I like Taco YOLO and want to remain a repeat customer to support the local entrepreneurs. Organic or not, I need a reason other than tacos. The Bombers are it.

Taco YOLO’s Poblano Bombers were a singular creation I had not experienced elsewhere. Oh, they might not be original to them, but they were to me. Though they are a menu special, they seem to be popular enough to stay on for a while. And I hope so because, with these, I have something to long for and to order when we return for Christa’s quesadillas.

They must be a pain to prep, though. Maybe I shouldn’t talk them up. What if demand grows and they run out whenever I visit? Eh, I’m really overestimating my local readership.

In addition to basic chips and salsa, Taco YOLO makes good nachos too—as we learned on our first visit. They have some other tempting apps, but most are still variations on the taco. If I’m going for a meal of tacos, it seems redundant to get variations on the taco for appetizers. That’s like eating Buffalo wings and potato skins before an entree of fried chicken and mashed potatoes.

The Mexican eggrolls look interesting, but aren’t those flautas? We’re already melding American and Mexican, why bring China into this? The Bacon Wrapped Shrimp Shrimp Brochette (sic) is a distinctive option and probably our next try when we return. But wait—bacon, jalapenos, cheese—that’s just a mini-bomb with sea-rice-cake for chicken. Dammit. And did they reference Jimmy Buffet in that menu description? I’m going to have to dock some points there…

Hey, it all tastes great, it’s quality ingredients, and it’s made fresh. In that respect, you can’t go wrong (Unless your name is John Schnatter). If I can house ten made-at-home tacos, I can eat two courses of essentially the same stuff configured in slightly different ways. So, next time: 7-layer dip to share, quesadillas for the wife, and the Poblano Bombers for me, because they were in my thoughts all night. Maybe only eat one from now on.

Poblano Bombers: Yo te quierro y finito. Yo te querda, oh mi heartburn!

Just kidding, they settled in just fine.

Thanks for reading!

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