I’m a taco person. Having been born in a Southern California town with a 79.5% Hispanic population, my one lament about living in Evanston is that there aren’t many good places to grab a taco, short of heading to Rogers Park. (Chipotle need not apply.)
I’ve been desperately waiting for the news of the official opening of Austin’s Tacos since I first noticed their sign go up on Davis in October. Within 24 hours of arriving in back in Evanston for winter quarter, I was there. My first thoughts were skeptical. Four dollars for a taco? Come on. But the ingredients were more than your usual beef-on-tortilla. Pulled pork, brisket, pickled onions, cabbage, sweet peppers. Most came with enough meat to split the toppings between two tortillas, effectively getting two tacos for the price of one. Another plus was the tortillas themselves — neither taste bland nor dry, and just the right thickness for holding a hefty amount of meat.
My favorite was the Immortal – one of the pricier choices at $4, but super filling, with marinated skirt steak, grilled onion, cheese and sweet peppers. The meat is tender and the peppers are a perfect addition. I found the plainer chicken Austonian ($3.50, also with shredded beef brisket or pork) to be a little more bland, with plain shredded chicken and pickled onions with cilantro as its only component.
Pro tip: Regardless of your dietary preferences, don’t let the vegan taco fly under your radar. A lighter fare with roasted zucchini, sweet peppers, black beans and pico de gallo, it packs a vegetable punch that doesn’t suffer from its lack of cheese. Though it was a little less filling than the meat tacos, it was a nice change of flavor.
If you’re looking for more than can be contained in a tortilla, you can make any taco into a combo, which adds a soup or a bowl of black beans and rice. As someone who doesn’t normally enjoy tortilla soup, I highly recommend this one: it tastes like a liquid chicken-infused tortilla (something I’d never realized I desired) and comes packed with chicken, avocado and zucchini, plus little strips of fried tortilla. The beans and rice are a good choice too – the full bowl is enough to be a meal on its own.
The restaurant has a few different salsas, from a typical red to a chipotle to a tomatillo verde. Most weren’t as spicy as I expected them to be, but they had great flavor. The salsa verde was tangy without being overwhelming, and it worked well with the cilantro topping and pickled onions of the Austonian, the basic taco.
As an added bonus, all the tacos come with a serving of guacamole, a luxury item rarely given out for free. Theirs is simple and has the perfect avocado texture – not too creamy or thin.
Though my taco senses have taught me that the dingier the locale, the better the taco, Austin' is far from a hole in the wall. The restaurant’s atmosphere is classy without being overwhelmingly swank. It’s neither too bright nor too dimly lit, and it is impeccably clean. The service is efficient to the point that our tables were bussed before we had even left, but also almost aggressively friendly — constantly asking about the quality of a meal or a customer’s opinion on a salsa. In the first three days I had been back to Evanston, I went twice, and I have no regrets.
Austin's Tacos
622 Davis St.
11 am - 11 pm, may change in the future