mexican restaurants twin cities

After more than a year of writing the Latin Tongue series, we are still finding surprises and learning lessons valuable and true. Let me start off by saying that when this whole Latin eating adventure comes to an end, I will look back upon it with much fondness and I hope to say that it has made me a better, more understanding person. A window to another world is open to anyone willing to sit down and have a meal with someone from another culture. There is possibly no better place to put yourself if you want a glimpse of the Latin world in the Twin Cities then El Mercado Central. Located on Bloomington and Lake, this small indoor market is packed with food, merchandise and plenty of good folks.

This is the latest post in our Latin Tongue series, which explores Latin eateries in the Twin Cities area. Check out the first article for the ground rules and a running list of restaurants we've covered.

What would you do if you heard about a place called Nacho's in the suburbs? Not a chance right? Sounds like someone's excuse to serve monstrous plates of high calorie, cheese smothered food. Now, what if all you did was add the word Supermercado. Nacho's Supermercado. Ok, I suppose it sounds a bit like a joke, but it is real and it is in downtown Hopkins. We simply could not resist checking it out because nothing about the name and location made sense. I was careful not to research it so that our surprise would be complete. What we found, was definitely a surprise, in more ways than one. 

Were there nachos? Nope. Was it a supermercado? Not really. Did they have a tortilla press, excellent barbacoa and three types of tamales? Well, of course. Lucky us…again.

Often one of the goals in these Latin eating adventures is finding a new place, one totally off the map. Almost everyone knows the pleasure in discovery and how rare it is in today’s world. Well, we may not have found something totally unknown to everyone, but we definitely feel like we were off the map, so to speak. We found ourselves in the rough, but spirited eastside neighborhood called Payne Phalen in St. Paul, eating at Bymore Taqueria.

Well, we continue to bounce around the Twin Cities and hope that everyone out there is on board for more Latin eats! With no end in sight and continual support for our efforts from readers, we continue to pick off taquerias, restaurantes and pupuserias with a seemingly insatiable appetite. If you would have told me after our first article that we would potentially still be going when the Winter came back around, well...ok, I was hopeful, I might have believed you...and given you a hug because I love this stuff. As a matter of fact, I love it even more when I can share with others and this past week was all about sharing. My friend John told me about a place in Richfield that I had not been to yet: Andale Taqueria.

Comfort is a curious thing. It can make you lazy, it can leave you stuck in a rut. It can even make you want to begin questioning something that you once previously loved and were passionate about. It may be too much to say that we are getting comfortable in our Latin eating adventures, but we do have moments where we start to think that we know what we are doing…a dangerous place to be for sure. A trip into the suburbs to visit a total unknown eatery should do the trick and set us straight.

It begins with the word Taqueria. For some reason we have found that any Latin eatery with this word in the title usually means the following things: small, unique, regional, very Mexican and very good. Now, the mere mention of the word can make me hungry.

Well, we're back after a brief hiatus. We heard from a number of folks after our 4 month review saying that they would love us to continue checking out local Mexican restaurants. We were easy to convince and so we pulled out our trusty list and then threw it out as the place we wanted to go didn't seem to have a name. At least not one that we knew.

We've come to a point in our eating of Latin foods, that I thought it only proper to post a status update and let you know how we see things in this process. As you may know from our intro article, we set out to try and answer a few questions. First, we wanted to see if we could shed any light on our American obsession with Latin eateries, specifically Mexican food. Second, we were curious about why we so seldom stop at any of the small and somewhat anonymous Latin eateries. When we finally did start settling our curiosity, what would we find. Third, we were really wondering about quality and diversity. With more than 50 small restaurants on our list, how many would actually be good and worth going back to?...and how long would we last? Fourth, does anyone really even care?

Our next Latin eating adventure would take us to the Dominguez Family Restaurant. Following the last review of Manana, this would be a perfect opportunity to point out the difficulty in comparing "Mexican" food as some would attempt to. We have always been very vocal about the idea of us having any expertise on what is "authentic" as being presumptuous and simply false. (read more about this in our intro article here.) I say this because the Dominguez restaurant is truly authentic for the fact that the whole family hails from Cuernevaca, just south of Mexico City. Imagine if we were to walk in and tried to pretend like we know more about Mexican food than they do.

People keep asking us, "How long are you going to keep doing this?" I'm not sure if they are surprised at out resilience, persistence or appetites, but here we are...another week, another new Latin eatery. This past week as we sat down to sup at Manana, in the Dayton's bluff neighborhood of St. Paul, we were anything but discouraged. Owner, Balmore Paiz certainly made sure that we were both well fed and well informed.