October 2023 Monthly Adventure
The month of October in Austin, as I've previously written about, is the city's busiest month for tourism. With back-to-back weekends of the Austin City Limits music festival and Formula 1 racing bringing big bucks to town for the big F1 race weekend and concerts at Circuit of the Americans, most of the local events are scaled down. Oh, and I can't forget about Texas Longhorns football games also being major events. I've been to all of these large scale events in the past, so I wanted to focus on something smaller. However, the smaller events did not seem as interesting to me this time around and I decided to spend a couple of weeks focused on adventuring around town to eat one my favorite foods -- tacos!
Background
Tacos are a personal and overall Texas favorite food. You can have them for breakfast, lunch and dinner all in the same day and not get tired of them. There is so much variety to tacos from the type of tortilla used to the fillings and, of course, toppings and sauces. In Austin, tacos are a BIG DEAL and you can pretty much find a taco shop around every corner. Even if tacos aren't the main dish, you can still find tacos on the menu at a large number of restaurants across town in a more traditional preparation or as a fusion concept between a couple of cuisines. Austin has a bit of a taco war with San Antonio over breakfast tacos, as I mentioned in my Day Trip to San Antonio blog post, and Austin is quite sure they have the best breakfast tacos.
Rather than getting caught up in picking sides, I decided to focus on finding some of the best tacos in Austin. I tried breakfast tacos in addition to tacos suitable for lunch and dinner at multiple places around town and ranked them based on the following criteria using a scale of 1-5 with 1 being the low end and 5 being the high end:
Cost
With breakfast tacos usually being cheaper than lunch and dinner tacos plus the rising cost of food, I'm basing my ideal cost at $3.75 per taco. Tacos in Austin also tend to be a little more expensive anyway and this price point should be a good middle ground to work with.
Size
Taste
To help keep scoring consistent, I committed to ordering a chorizo and egg taco and one other breakfast taco so I could compare breakfast tacos more easily. For lunch and dinner tacos, I chose one signature taco of the restaurant and a chicken a taco if a chicken taco was not a signature menu item. I also did not add salsa to any of the tacos I ate until after taking the first bite so I could really taste and judge the tacos. Each taco was ranked on a scale of 1-5 in the following categories: cost, size, and taste. Each taco had a highest overall score of 15 points, so the highest total overall score a restaurant could receive is 30 points. I used this Google Sheet to keep up with scoring as I ate my way through some of Austin's tastiest tacos.
Breakfast Tacos
Taco Shack
Total Overall Score: 22
The chorizo and egg taco is absolutely one of the best breakfast tacos I tried for this Monthly Adventure. The taco was a bit larger, filled as much as possible, and packed with flavor even with the chorizo not being spicy. At $4.39, the migas taco was more expensive than other places and lacked the memorable flavor I was hoping for given the price. It was also really greasy which made the tortilla chips soggy. I may not get the migas taco again, but I'll go back for the chorizo and egg taco any day.
Kesos Tacos
Total Overall Score: 25
The breakfast tacos at Kesos Tacos are the largest tacos I've seen around Austin and were more similar in size to the San Antonio breakfast tacos. The migas taco was $3.75 and cheaper than pretty much any other place I've seen around the city. It also had a lot of filling and very good flavor, but I can't say it's the best migas I've eaten. The chorizo and egg taco was $3.25, so more expensive than some of the other tacos. It was also a little greasy and the tortilla was lacking the flavor that likely would've pulled the whole thing together to bring the taste to another level.
Taco Joint
Total Overall Score: 22
I remember some friends in college telling me they loved getting tacos from Taco Joint and I can see why they said that now that I've tried them. The chorizo in my chorizo and egg taco was the best chorizo so far at the time I tried it and they have really good tortillas. The tacos are also a nice size, but are not packed with toppings or filling like some other tacos. These tacos are $3.25 each which is more expensive than other breakfast tacos. What I liked most about Taco Joint was the tortilla -- a key ingredient in tacos that can really enhance the taste if made well.
El Tacorrido
Total Overall Score: 23
At $2.75 per taco, these are the most affordable breakfast tacos I ordered. The tacos are not big, but probably about an average size and generally tasted good. This was not my favorite chorizo and egg taco of the ones I ate in my Austin Taco Tour, but the potato, egg, and cheese taco is one that I would get again. If I was also giving out a score for salsa, their salsa verde would easily be a 5 because it really helped pull the flavors of each taco together!
Papalote
Total Overall Score: 22
The tacos from Papalote are about an average size - not large, but also not small. The $2.84 cost of the chorizo and egg taco was great and the chorizo was also really good. The size was about average for both tacos, but their migas taco was the best one of all the migas tacos I tried for this Monthly Adventure. The migas taco was around $4.00 and that brought the score down for this taco. However, I would say that Papalote had some of the better tasting breakfast tacos of all I ate in the past couple of weeks.
Lunch and Dinner Tacos
Taco Deli
Total Overall Score: 16
Perhaps it was the location or maybe it was the fact that I finally ate these tacos without salsa on them from the very first bite, but my chicken taco and my sirloin taco were the weak links in my Austin Taco Tour. Don't let the score deceive you though -- the Pollo Fantastico was delicious! However, the tacos are smaller and more expensive than other taco places around town. That drove the overall score down, but Taco Deli is still good for your taco fix. If you need tacos catered, I would recommend getting the sirloin and fajita chicken options because I have never been let down by those when catered for work events.
Rosita's Al Pastor
Total Overall Score: 24
I have always said this is my favorite place in Austin to get tacos because Rosita's has the best pastor tacos in town. However, I've only ever eaten their pastor tacos. In my visit for the Austin Taco Tour, I got a chicken fajita taco along with a pastor taco. As usual, the pastor taco was perfection and it was great to eat one after not going to the restaurant in a really long time. The chicken fajita taco was a bit of a surprise because the chicken was a bit dry although it was seasoned well. However, Rosita's tacos are much more affordable at about $3.00 per taco which is ideal if you're looking for overall really tasty tacos at an affordable price!
Valentina's Tex Mex BBQ
Total Overall Score: 21
Technically, Valentina's isn't in Austin because the restaurant is in Buda after a recent move to this new brick-and-mortar location. South Austin and Buda are one in the same as far as I'm concerned and therefore Valentina's still counts in the Austin Taco Tour. These were both the largest and most expensive tacos out all that I tried, but the taste of both the pulled pollo and the smoked brisket tacos along with their size being bigger than my iPhone helped make up for the cost that was double what my the average taco cost would be. I'll have to go back at some point for that delicious smoked brisket taco!
El Primo/Burrito Factory
Total Overall Score: 24
El Primo is the food truck in South Austin, but their brick-and-mortar location is called Burrito Factory. I went to Burrito Factory and that grilled chicken taco is one of the best tacos I have ever eaten! That taco received a perfect score and the delicious flavor simply cannot be forgotten. I normally don't go for chicken tacos which is why I thought it would be a good taco to get everywhere. If the chicken taco is really good, I will be impressed and this impressed me! The flavor of my pastor taco wasn't very intense, but overall still good. These tacos were priced at $3.75 each which is right on target for an ideal price in Austin.
El Chilito
Total Overall Score: 21
Originality and good flavor without the need for added salsa are essential to a good taco and the puffy taco from El Chilito is a great example of how this can be achieved. That was my favorite taco to eat during the Austin Taco Tour! This taco will stick with me forever and will absolutely be going back to get more in the near future. The pollo asado taco was rich with smokiness and flavor, but either the chicken or corn tortilla (perhaps a combination of both) left more to be desired which prevented it from receiving the highest taste score. It might work better with a flour tortilla which can probably be said about other tacos on this list.
Note: If you liked this taco tour of Austin, you should follow Kimi's Travel Thoughts on Instagram! Only on IG can you find the #KTTDumplingTour where I post dumplings and other "pocket food" that I eat as I explore new and familiar places. I'll also have more pictures of the tacos I ate!
Wrap-Up
So based on my list of restaurants, which has the best tacos in Austin? As far as breakfast tacos go, Kesos Tacos had the best in my opinion. They are large, priced just right for the Austin area, and were very tasty. However, any place usually has good breakfast tacos as made evident by the close total overall scores for the breakfast tacos.
Which restaurant did I think had the best tacos for lunch or dinner? That would be El Primo, a.k.a. Burrito Factory. Although the total overall score is tied with Rosita's al Pastor, the cost was average for the Austin area and the Burrito Factory tacos are larger in addition to being delicious. This helped Burrito Factory get the slight edge over Rosita's al Pastor for my Austin Taco Tour.
Now, these are all my opinions based on a really small sample size of the tacos that are available for purchase around Austin, Texas. You may hear different ideas of what the best tacos in Austin are from other people who live here. This list was pretty solid for good tacos in the area and eating all of these tacos in a short amount of time. My list was a combination of places I like and places that came from lists compiled by local food bloggers. Shout out to all the people in Austin who have been updating these lists regularly because it helped jog my memory of all the restaurants people rave about. It if wasn't for them, I would've never thought to make it to all these places for tacos.
So, does Austin have the better tacos along I-35? I'll probably need to eat even more tacos in San Antonio before I can give my final answer. In the meantime, I'm just going to enjoy good food wherever I can find it. On to the next Monthly Adventure!
Feel free to leave comments below, tweet (@KimiThoughts), or leave a post/message on Facebook (@KimisTravelThoughts) !