More Than Just Tacos on Tuesday

I have noted my love for Taco Bamba before. It is a fantastic little chain of Mexican eateries in the Northern Virginia area with a diverse selection of food stuffs on the menu. Better, though, is that each location has specialty tacos only they offer, making it fun to go to every Taco Bamba to see what’s different and what specials they have on offer. It’s like pokemon, but you not only get to collect them and eat them afterwards. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s not a mechanic in those games…

On my recent trip up for SpeedGaming Live I ended up visiting not one but two Taco Bamba locations because I had two different sets of people I was eating with and, each time, they eventually voted to go to one of the Taco Bamba locations. While I usually try to eat at a few different places when I’m on a trip, never doubling up if I can help it, this was a case of “oh, no… don’t twist my arm… oh darn.” Regretfully (except not at all) I went along with them and got to try a few different items from both stores we visited.

Taco Bamba Fair Lakes

I will note that this store serves a lot of tortas (a kind of Mexican sandwich) and I have yet to even go near those yet. There are so many other things on the menus, like all the tacos, that I want to try and it feels weird (despite them being traditional) to get a sandwich at a Mexican eatery. Maybe one day.

For this visit I got nachos (because Taco Bamba’s nachos are always amazing (as you could see from my previous review of them) along with two tacos. Those were the Can I See a Manager and the El Shrimpo. In this head to head the Can I See a Manager came out clearly ahead, leaving El Shrimpo far in the dust for a few solid reasons.

The Can I See a Manager is composed of chipotle bourbon brisket burnt ends, ugly slaw, sweet chili, citrus pickled onion, cilantro, crispy jalapeño. The burnt ends provided a tasty, beef flavor that wasn’t tough or chewy, along with a nice smoky back end. All the toppings only added to the experience, adding heat but also sweetness, citrus, and a light flavor that helped, not hindered, the whole of the experience. I don’t know that I’d call the flavor particularly Mexican, but it was delicious. This will be a taco I go back for again and again any time I eat at this location.

Sadly, as noted, the El Shrimpo didn’t compare. It’s composed of tempura shrimp, avocado, hibiscus miso aioli, cabbage, mint, basil, fresno chile, spicy mango, toasted peanut. You would expect from that mix to get something with a distinctive, Asian flavor but, somehow, it just doesn’t come together. Honestly it didn’t taste like much of anything, and I blame some rather dull mango, the avocado, and the shrimp. While the fruit and veg dulled the experience, the Shrimp really failed everything. It was bland and boring without the distinctive tempura crunch I expected. It all felt like dull paste in my mouth and not something very appetizing. I finished the Can I See a Manager but I left the El Shrimpo half eaten, a real knock against a taco that cost five bucks to get.

Taco Bamba Herndon

For my second stop on the great Taco Bamba tour (on two different days and totally not a tour) I went with a pal to the Herndon location. There I naturally got nachos (because, of course I did) along with two other tacos to try out, the Arabe and the Spicy Shroom. Of the two I liked the Arabe a lot better, although both had their pros and cons.

The Arabe is composed of grilled chicken, ancho mayo, cucumber pico de gallo, spicy yogurt, mint, pita. Opening it up you find effectively a couple of gorditas (due to the pita shells) filled with meat and a lot of hot, red sauce. That spicy yogurt is, in fact, quite spicy, and it dominates the flavor. I could tell from the texture that there was chicken and pico in the mix, but it was primarily the spicy sauce I tasted. It was good, being both refreshing (due to the yogurt) and hot (because, damn, it was spicy), but I did feel like the flavor dominated everything else. For those looking for a more nuanced, diverse bit of flavor, the Arabe will not suit. But it was tasty at a very basic level.

The Spicy Shroom was more flawed, by comparison. It’s composed of chipotle portobellos, grilled corn, cotija, pickled onion, heart of palm, cilantro, pepitas. Weirdly, despite the fact that I could taste more of the ingredients here than in the Arabe I actually liked the overall flavor less. There’s a lot going on in this and it all feels like it conflicts, especially when eaten as a taco. I ate through about half of the taco as a taco and then, at a certain point, set it down and started picking the pieces out. I liked it better this way because I could actually taste all the ingredients and found them to be quite delicious. When all combined, though, it felt like the taco was much worse than the sum of its parts.

And yeah, I think in the future I’d probably get the Arabe again, but paired with something more normal (like the tried and true titular Taco Bamba taco) so I can eat back and forth between the two and enjoy the mix of flavors.