Tacolandia VS Taco Libre

In a previous post I talked about my glorious adventure at Taco Libre. The first, all taco all the time, festival held in downtown Dallas. Tacolandia is the Dallas Observer answer to Taco Libre. I realize the easiest way to go about this is to compare and contrast the two, because essentially they're the same event with a slightly different name.

Tacolandia took place at the Dallas City Hall Plaza, which is a nice, basically concrete, area of land with a small green patch and some random sculptures. My team (my brother, his girlfriend and my boyfriend) and I arrived about 10 minutes before the gates opened. I learned from Taco Libre to get there a little early unless you want to wait for an hour. Gates opened, we were given some boxes to hold our tacos and a voting chip and were free to eat. And when I say free to eat, I mean that in every sense of the term. It was free to eat. The cost of food was in the cost of your ticket.

So close to the entrance. I want to eat TACOS!

They had 28 vendors serving their version of a taco. Wait, let me correct that statement. They scheduled to have 28 different vendors but I know some didn't show up like Torchy's Tacos. I'm disappointed in you Torchy's. I love you so much and to see you willingly ignore an obligation you agreed to made me feel like your mother. Shaking my head in shame and sadness.

Most were street tacos and like I've said before, there are only so many meat, onion, cilantro tacos you can eat before you get bored. But there were some variations.

Velvet Taco wins for most unique with a Chicken Tikka Taco. An Indian-inspired taco with basmati rice and Thai basil. My brother and his girlfriend voted them to be the best taco based on sheer creativity.

Val's Cheesecakes, whom I actively follow on Instagram, created a taco cheesecake. Yep, taco...cheesecake. I'll wait for that to sink in. It is exactly what it sounds like. Taco flavored cheesecake. Against my better judgement I tried it and my gut was right. Cheesecakes are meant to be sweet not savory. It was too weird for me and I can't say I was a fan. But I'll try a cheesecake one of these days.

I had more than one salmon taco, on accident. It was about 80 degrees that day and salmon was just not something I wanted to eat. That's like asking for food poisoning. Kozy Kitchen was one of those salmon tacos, which I had one bite of and threw out because I refused to waste precious stomach space on tacos I didn't want to eat. One or Done. One bite or I finish it. No middle ground. They also had a buffalo taco, which was fine but not great. Another one bite wonder.

Biggest disappointment

Taco Diner had a chicken and waffle taco. Freaking CHICKEN AND WAFFLE taco. When I first walked by they didn't have any ready and when they finally did the line was ridiculous so I missed out on it's wonder. But props for the idea. I was actually extremely disappointed that I missed out of that taco above all others. I was so curious of this taco that when I recently went to Taco Diner I ordered it and was not thrilled. In the below picture the chicken at Tacolandia was obviously fired to a crispy goodness. At Taco Diner the chicken was breaded in an egg batter like tempura and that was a mistake. The batter didn't hold up well enough to the sauce and the maple syrup. You lost the texture, which an egg batter already doesn't offer much of, rather quickly. Fried chicken Taco Diner, or none at all.

Photo credit to Taco Diner

Lazaranda had my favorite taco of the day. It was a pulled pork taco but the sauce was just this side of salsa and the pickled veggies were on point. Plus, they put the cheese on the bottom AND they threw that on the flat top so it melted and just started to crisp up. I ate one, loved it, waited in line for 10 minutes to both give them my vote, along with the boyfriend, and eat another.

Check out that glorious winner! Well my personal winner.

Besides the food, Tacolandia also took things a little further for its patrons. There was a DJ pumping out some tunes. They had the only grass area set up with bags, massive beer pong, horseshoes, just some fun lawn games. There were some photo-opt areas throughout plus an actual photo-booth area hidden among the taco vendors. They also had people doing Sugar Skull face paintings, which actually looked legit. Those people did a good job. The only thing you  needed to pay for inside the event was drinks. But all drinks. Alcoholic and non-alcoholic alike.

My personal take-away: 

If Tacolandia and Taco Libre got together and had a baby, that baby would be "The Best Damn Taco Festival in Texas" (I'm claiming that name).

Taco Libre did great with publicizing the event. It was packed. Again, had to wait an hour to get in and the event sold out. Tacolandia was not so packed (which isn't really a downside as a customer but as a coordinator not exactly what you want). It was out on social media but I don't feel like it was as much as it could be. Taco Libre paid for social media ads, either got local food bloggers to advertise on their social sites or were out there enough that bloggers just went ahead and promoted it themselves. Leading up to Taco Libre I couldn't escape it. Tacolandia was really only promoted in the Dallas Observer. I did see an occasional flyer here or there, but I didn't see anywhere near as much of it on Insta nor did I see much on Facebook. It was there, but not as predominate as it could be.

Taco Libre had bands. Granted they were more Mexican bands and that's not really my thing, but live music is nice. Tacolandia had a DJ. He did music. But no one really cared.

Tacolandia was 21+. No damn kids ALLOWED! That was the best. No kids running around, no strollers, no crying. I was so happy to not have to deal with children under my feet while navigating tacos. I'm focused. I'm in the zone. My taco zone does not include me making sure that I don't murder your children. 

Tacolandia was smart to include the cost of food in the ticket. And the ticket prices weren't outrageous either. I got my tickets on sale for National Taco Day, they were 40% off, so that knocked the cost down to $15/ticket. $15 for all you can eat tacos is a deal to me. Hell, $25 still isn't that bad for all you can eat tacos. Taco Libre had it that you had to buy tickets, then buy tacos, and buy beer. It was a mess of money. Here, I didn't have to pick and choose with tacos I ate because I didn't want to spend $100 on tacos alone.

Tacolandia was in the "fall", which in Texas still means summer. That was nice. The weather that weekend was in the 80s. It wasn't blistering hot like Taco Libre was. The outdoor space offered a variety of locations to sit when Taco Libre offered only the grass and, fingers crossed, you didn't get stepped on. Now, to be fair, Taco Libre's location was visually more appealing, taking place in a park, but Tacolandia was more...user friendly.

This is how "The Best Damn Taco Festival in Texas" needs to work. Cost of food included in the ticket, more advertising on social media, done on or around National Taco Day (puts your solidly in early fall, plus give it more of a "national" reason which could up the attendance rate), keep the outdoor activities and keep the music.

Put that taco in your box and eat it!

Taco Libre!

What is the best food on the planet? I'll give you 5 seconds to think about that just kidding it's tacos. Tacos, the most perfect vesicle to transport delicious meat and toppings into your mouth for consumption. Why are tacos great?

1. Various types of filling. You have beef, chicken, fish, barbacoa, carne asada, pork. Really anything you want as a filling is doable. Hell, there are even choco-tacos that are ice cream sundaes in a taco shell.

2. You can also top them with anything. Classic cheese and salsa, mango salsa, slaw. The combinations of fillings to toppings is essentially endless.

3. If you eat your taco over other taco shells you automatically get a new taco. I like to use my chips as a nacho, scoop the fallings onto the chip and use the salsa or the queso as a binder. Taco nachos. 
(You're welcome)

So when Taco Libre was announced for last weekend I was all over that. Endless tacos amidst beer and music for an entire afternoon into the evening? Why would I say no to that? Alex and I bought our tickets ahead of time. It was the smartest decision ever because 1. We had our tickets and 2. If you bought them online and got the early bird tickets they were $10 cheaper long as you were inside the doors by 5 PM. I do love saving money.

Alex and I got there around 4 PM because traffic was awful and find out so was the line for Taco Libre. It was wrapping around the park. To be fair, it was a small park, but still.

That was just the people in front of us, there were people behind us and it wrapped around at the corner.

During our almost hour wait in line we found out the event sold out. Like I said, we already had our tickets so it was great news for us. We assumed the line would move along quicker after that announcement but no, everyone else in line also had tickets. Seriously, we were almost in line for an hour.

Naturally, if it's sold out that means the event itself was packed, and it was. They had various taco shops along one side of the park and the lines were about 15 mins waits a piece. Booze was closer to a 20 min wait. 

Hurry up to wait

We got out first tacos at Revolver Taco Lounge.  I was starving at this point so I ordered 2 crispy tacos and 2 barbacoa tacos. For those of you that don't know, barbacoa is goat. It's actually really good. If done well it's like beef. From what I could understand the cripsy tacos were filled with meat, of some kind, deep fried, then given to us in bags with a slaw and marinade mix that we were supposed to shake. The barbacoa tacos were like typical street taco style, add your cilantro and onions and whatever sauce.

TACOS!

After that we walked around a little bit to try to find alcohol. Well, not find it, it was around, but find a line that wouldn't take forever. Heat stroke was not on my to-do list for the day. After we were refreshed with beer I wanted to try at least one more taco joint while there so we got some more tacos at Urban Taco. 

I got an al pastor taco and some type of chicken taco. Of the two, the chicken taco was better. The chicken was seasoned well and was moist. The al pastor taco was a little chewier than I would have preferred. We enjoyed our tacos and beer while hanging out in front of the stage while listening to Pinata Protest. They are a band from San Antonio and they actually had fans in the audience that knew the songs so I take it they are somewhat popular. 

At the end of the day the biggest complaint I had, and various other people, was it ended up being bigger than expected. That's obviously not a bad thing. You want events to be popular, that's the whole point. But for the location is was small with long waits. The other "complaint" would be that every station was street tacos. I love street tacos, I understand they are easy, but when you're just getting 14 restaurants with their variations of street tacos you're not going to find much actual variety. Also, it was hot, but that's Texas. 

We ended up leaving after an hour or so. The plan was to head over to the Reunion Tower Lawn Party but that changed last minute, which was fine. I didn't need to spend more money. If they end up doing Taco Libre again, which they should it's a great idea, it needs to be in a bigger location. Variety in food options should be suggested to the restaurants. Also, more weird guys dressed like this...

Chocolate, Cheese and Bubbles! Oh My

This post is centered around my most favorite of favorite foods in the word. Cheese. I love cheese. Seriously, I took a Buzzfeed Quiz once that asked "Would you rather give up cheese or oral sex?" and I gave up on the quiz.That first question was too hard. But upon further discussion about that with my coworkers we all decided we would keep cheese in our lives. That's how important cheese is.

A picture of my food pyramid. 

A couple weeks ago Megan asked me if I would ever be interested in a cheese tasting class. I then realized that she clearly didn't know me well enough if she needed to ask me that. Obviously a cheese tasting class is something that needs to happen in everyone's life, but especially mine. So we bought tickets to Scardello's "Chocolate, Cheese and Bubbles" class. They have multiple classes but chocolate, cheese AND bubbles was something that needed to happen like yesterday.

So artisan. 

Upon arrival the shop is small but it's got a rustic country chic thing going on. Based off the size you can see why these classes sell out quickly, at best you can maybe fit 40 people. Also, unless you go in a big group, be ready to become friends with your neighbors.

Look at all the chic-ness happening. So many pickled items.

I was more than ready for the cheese to come. For real. Cheese me please.

Cheeeeeeese!

What was disappointing? The sample sizes. To be fair, yes it's a tasting, and additionally no amount of sample sized cheese would ever win my heart, so I can't put that as an actual negative. I would, maybe, be satisfied with individual wheels of each cheese, plus chocolate bars and whole bottles of champagne. So being realistic here, those are hard expectations to accomplish.

Look at that glorious cheese plate.

The way they do this is they pair two complimentary types of cheese with one piece of chocolate and one type of champagne. You then, essentially, have four tasting rounds. There is also bread for you to spread cheese on, or clear your palate a little between tasting courses. As you go through the courses you learn a little background on the cheese and the champagne (not so much the chocolate but you get a little bit). They tell you the difference between one type to the other, the processes they go through. It's interesting little tid-bits of knowledge dropped on ya.

Seriously, look at that set-up. Cheese and chocolate goodness.

At the end I wanted another tray of cheese. I thought about buying a few wheels as well (as you can in store), but knew they wouldn't last (which I guess is the point). But I would absolutely buy some of those cheeses, I marked down the ones I liked for future consumption. There were only two cheeses I didn't like. One was a bleu cheese, but I don't like bleu. That one was difficult to eat too because I could tell I was trying a great quality bleu cheese, I just couldn't bring myself to like it. But the chocolate it paired with cut some of the overpowering bleu cheese flavor for me so I did finish my piece. It also dawned on me almost immediately upon starting the class that, "I'm totally bringing Caitlin here." I already told her we were gonna go to a class here, she's excited. Because cheese.

So Scardello. Go buy cheese there. There sell other things too, like wine and ornate tasting salts and pickled things. It's artisan, so you know it's fancy.

Fancy wines

Fancy salts

Take a class if cheese is your thing, and it should be. If cheese is not your thing, and it's not for a medical reason, you should keep that to yourself. Never trust a person that doesn't like cheese.