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This ought to be a glorious moment, in other words, for sit-down tacos. But it’s not. All the worst tacos I’ve eaten, and only a handful of the best, have come from New York restaurant kitchens.
This is not because I romanticize the hot, dribbly taco eaten with a tilted head and cupped hand at a stall in Mexico City or a parking lot in Chinatown in Los Angeles or a sidewalk in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. No, it’s because, objectively speaking, those tacos have a better shot at greatness than one that rides on a plate from a kitchen to a table.
I am not talking about the tacos you make yourself by wrapping a few forkfuls of your mole or adobo into a warm and willing tortilla pulled moments before from the basket next to your margarita. Those are almost always fantastic, and if you like tacos I strongly urge you to eat them that way as often as possible.
The problem tacos, the underachieving tacos, are the ones assembled on a plate by an overworked line cook and then picked up by an overworked server and ferried across the dining room to your table, where they sit and wait until you and all the people you’re out with stop talking and drinking and begin to eat. All this time, the tortilla has been curling and going brittle like an autumn leaf and the filling has been nosing up toward room temperature.
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shaun james bockert 