Sabores Latinos (cart)

In a word: Tasty if ordinary Mexican.

The specs: #0579  
Address, hours & details via Isthmus; reviews at AV Club, Badger Herald.

JM ate three tacos (steak, pork, and chicken).
John ate the chicken tacos with rice and beans.
Judith ate the pork quesadilla.
Nichole ate the steak burrito.
Skip ate the chicken pork tacos with rice and beans.
The bill was about $6/person, plus tip.
Nichole gave Sabores Latinos an A-; JM and Skip gave Sabores Latinos a B; John and Judith gave Sabores Latinos a C+ (see our grading rubric).

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Now these are what we think of as good tacos.

The folks behind Antojitos el Toril run Sabores Latinos, so we were predisposed to like it. The cart's menu is the familiar choice of taco ($2, or 2 with beans and rice for $6), burrito ($7), or quesadilla ($5) in beans n' cheese, steak, chicken, or pork varieties. While the cart didn't blow us away as much as its home base had, it's still up there.

Our pick for most utils of deliciousness would be pork tacos with the works (onion, cilantro, and two kinds of salsa). Skip called his pork taco special a solid B. He's a semi-regular at this cart, and when we stopped at Natural Juice, Sabores had been his choice of hot food as well.

John and Judith did yeoman's work writing up their own meals, which made our task putting this post together that much easier. Judith also kindly threw herself on the grenade that is the pork quesadilla with guacamole and sour cream so that we could cover the entire menu, and of it she wrote:

A sufficient amount of chunky pork and a few onion pieces in a mild red seasoning. Not enough to call it a sauce, more like a coating. Lettuce and sour cream on the side added a little something to the moderate amount of flavor already present. Cheese was present but didn’t add much flavor. Texture perhaps. Cheese’s primary contribution was the post-consumption leaden belly. Tortilla didn’t seem to be a grocery store type, which was nice. Served hot and a fair size portion for the price of $5.

John waxed philosophical about chicken, neatly summing up our picnic conversation about the pros and cons of light and dark meat:

The problem with the chicken tacos was the white meat, which was dry, without much flavor. At first, I thought this spoke to a need for more dark meat, and wondered about the tyranny of white meat (why do so many people consider it of "higher quality" when dark meat has so much more flavor?) But then, I hit another Mexican restaurant off of State Street, where they, too, serve shredded while white [--edited] meat on their tacos. But here, the white meat was moist and flavorful, so it can be done. The fault wasn't in the meat, but the preparation.

Nichole's burrito hinted, and bites stolen from JM's variety pack of tacos confirmed, that her opinion of the animal protein hierarchy here is inverse to that of El Burrito Loco's: pork (not available at El BL) > steak > chicken. (We're still looking for good refried beans from a cart). The beef was on the tough side, scantly marinated, but the hot sauce was great. She forgot to ask for no lettuce but didn't die or anything. The burrito easily made two meals, and at $7 that's a plus.

The beans and rice were middling; we all noticed how salty these were, yet Skip [did not mind their wet consistency] and John observed [his] their preference was for this high degree of runniness. The rice was orange and dotted with corn kernels, apparently de rigeur (we'll buy a soda for someone who can tell us with footnotes why this is, and why at Indian buffets it's usually peas). The lime wedges were ultra fresh.

This is a cart we will miss in winter.

Comments

[Kyle]

shredded while meat

Typos happne.

[EiMAtZ]

Typo noted and fixed; our apologies to John.

[Kyle]

I figured it was his! (thbbpt, John)

[Skip]

You have me eating chicken tacos in the beginning of the post instead of pork.

I don't recall saying I had a preference for runny reefers. I thought it was that I didn't mind them whereas someone else did.

Or is it my memory?

[EiMAtZ]

Skip, apologies. Further edits made.

(Thank you for using the word "post." We're loath to call anything riddled with this many mistakes a "review.")

[Skip]

Nichole - I will exact my revenge at a date TBD.