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 Entertainment | Restaurants & Dining | April 2008 
A Salute to the Art of the Taco
 Luis Humberto Crosthwaite - San Diego Union-Tribune
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Two marvelous syllables. A four-letter word that guards a treasure of flavor, that dignifies the palate, that buoys the person who eats it the taco.
An essential and versatile food. A sprinkling of a little salt on a corn tortilla and then rolling it up comprises the most basic taco – and the most consumed one in Mexican homes.
In Mexico, the trade of a taquero is much more admired than that of a politician or public servant. The way it should be.
The taco is so important that to eat it requires a certain etiquette. By the way it is introduced into the mouth we know if the person is a journeyman or beginner. The salsa stains on the shirt give away the rookie.
Tacos are the authentic fast food, prepared in seconds. Anyone who has seen a master taquero in action knows this.
The taquero places a square-shaped paper on his hand. The soft, hot tortilla on the paper. The meat on the tortilla. Then rest of the ingredients – beans, guacamole and salsa – in a rapid, rhythmic motion.
There is an unwritten agreement between taquero and client: The master must be attentive to the exact moment when the last bit of taco disappears in the client's mouth, because he knows that he must have another one prepared, ready to be served. No one wants to eat tacos out of sync.
As well, the client must be up to the taquero's standards.
Eating a taco is not simply placing it in the mouth, chewing it.
For starters, a taco is eaten while standing. The client must stand with legs apart, his torso slightly inclined forward, so the salsa does not fall on his shirt or shoes.
And a compensation law always applies. The taquero knows that the client will say that he consumed one fewer taco, and the master always adds one taco to the total. A universal balance is maintained.
I firmly believe that the greatest contribution made to the taco was when a fisherman, or his wife, placed a piece of fish on a tortilla, creating a perfect work of art.
Similarly, I firmly believe that the greatest heresy was to create prefolded tortillas. Why prefold a tortilla if folding it is so pleasurable?
A Mexican TV network came up with the idea that this food deserved an International Day of the Taco, and that it should be observed March 31.
That day we celebrated the women who prepare tacos in the morning for their husbands to eat at lunch on the job; the mothers who make their children and grandchildren smile with this ancestral meal; the master taqueros, mind-reading cultural icons who work for meager wages and a few coins in tips.
More than a day, they deserve a monument.
luis.crosthwaite(at)mienlace.com |
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