Hey y’all, it’s Tuesday (or Wednesday, depending on your time zone)! And you know what goes well with Tuesday? Tacos! I went on a mini taco run recently and I’m here to present my finds 
But before we dive into that, I want to drop some Thanksgiving pics 
The weekend before the holidays, my Vietnamese friend and I drove back to our college town for a Thanksgiving house party with the piano club. He contributed Vietnamese snacks—flown straight from Vietnam 
—while I made a red curry dumpling soup with udon!
There were way more dishes than shown but the other pictures have my friends’ faces and I don’t want to violate their privacy 
I should’ve taken a pic of my red curry dumpling soup when it was done because it does not look photogenic in the first pic 
It was a really fun party! I was happy to reunite with old buds and meet new ones :3
I did go to my cousin’s house on the actual day for lunch at her place, but didn’t take any pictures there. I hope that those who celebrated Thanksgiving earlier had a great time! 
BUT BACK TO TACOS! My latest taco run was inspired by something a little less positive. Don’t kill me please, but I used to think Mexican food was astronomically overrated (keyword: used to).
If you want to know why I thought so, read here. It's a long read about an Asian's rough start to her Mexican food journey.
In Indonesia, the closest we had to Mexican food was Tex-Mex and Chili’s. I used to dream of eating tacos and stuff because the American shows I’d watch would hype them up. I still dream of eating the spaghetti tacos from iCarly (which isn’t a real Mexican dish, I know, but you get the point ¯_(ツ)_/¯).
When I landed in the US to go to college, I was hyped to try Mexican food for real. I had cheese quesadillas and they were alright. Then I had some other things and… they just weren’t hitting that hard. It’s not that they were bad, per se, but they didn’t meet my expectations after all the hype.
My white American now-ex-boyfriend was one of the people who hyped it up. He was shocked to hear that I’ve never had a burrito and sad that I wasn’t too fond of the cuisine. He’s told me a few times that he really wanted to take me to a Mexican restaurant. Eventually I gave it a shot. I asked my Taiwanese-Argentinian foodie friend for the best Mexican restaurant in our Midwestern college town, and he pointed us to this one restaurant not too far from campus.
My now-ex and I went. Things were off to a good start, and I really liked the chips and salsa. I ordered the fajitas and a pork taco while my ex got a burrito. When they brought out the sizzling plate of fajitas, I was so excited.
It was dry 
the only juicy strips of meat were the ones that still had fat attached to the ends, but even those weren’t that succulent. The taco was an even bigger disappointment; not only were they drier than the fajitas, but they just lacked flavor even after I squirted some lime. Meanwhile my ex was raving about the food and said that it was the best Mexican restaurant he’s been to in his life—a statement he repeated multiple times throughout our lunch the irony is that he liked my fajitas more and I preferred his burrito.
When we left the restaurant, he asked me to rate the place on a scale of 1 to 10. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I gave a very generous 7. I still got a big and sad gasp of surprise. He gave the place a 9 out of 10 
As sacrilegious as it sounds, I preferred the stuff at Chipotle as well as the campus cafeteria I worked at.
In the case of the latter, our head chef was Mexican, so the food we served out of the Mexican station was often made fresh and had a degree of authenticity. I liked the chips and guacamole a lot. The rest was okay. Not bad, but again, not life-changing.
A few months later, I was going to host a friend and recent alumnus at my off-campus apartment. He, like my ex, is a white American who loves Mexican food. Unlike my ex, this particular white friend has a history of cooking well and claims that Mexican cuisine is one of the best foods known to mankind. He’s also acted as an authority on authentic Mexican food. He’s spent time working in factories with lots of Hispanic workers, and those workers would bring Mexican food. I think you can see where this is going 
So I wanted to host a mini dinner party with a couple other people, two of whom were international students like myself. One of them is the same Vietnamese friend currently attending grad school in Chicago. I was going to make pork lumpia for the aforementioned dinner party while my white American friend wanted to make tacos. I was like, oh perfect, we could buy a lot of ground pork and just split it between our dishes!
My guys, he insisted on buying pre-seasoned taco meat from the grocery store
I was apprehensive about it, not just because of the flavor, but also because whatever we wouldn’t finish would be left in my kitchen for me to figure out. I asked him, are you sure? We can just buy a lot of ground pork and season it ourselves. I even told him that I wouldn’t know what to do with leftover taco meat, but I could make good use of plain ground pork.
He doubled down. Regarding that last point, he told me “you can just make more tacos” from the pre-seasoned meat, knowing full well that I wasn’t into Mexican food at the time. I let him have his way, since he had much more experience with Mexican food, and hoped he would prove me wrong.
It was soon time to cook. I focused fully on making pork lumpia while my friend cooked the tacos. Our other two friends helped with the cooking as well. It took quite a while but eventually dinner was ready.
Then the time came to eat. I put the taco meat on my tortilla, added onions and cilantro, and squirted a good bit of lime juice. I took my first bite.
It was some of the blandest and driest meat I’ve had in recent memory. And the worst part was that it wasn’t just bland, it was overly peppery AND bland! This was a shock considering how this same dude had made wonderful dishes at house parties before.
And you want to know what was even more infuriating?
This white American friend who touted Mexican cuisine and insisted on using pre-seasoned meat looked at me and said this: “Stella, I’m really sorry, but this meat is too spicy for me and I can’t eat more tacos.”
Outwardly I was just laughing at his poor spice tolerance. Inwardly I was super frustrated. He was the one who doubled down on buying pre-seasoned taco meat, cooked the meat, and even tasted the meat while cooking! Yet it ended up too spicy for him.
We still had an abundance of taco components by the end of dinner. My lumpia? Finished. That same friend audibly remarked that people kept on eating my lumpia. Needless to say, he did the opposite of helping this Asian girl appreciate Mexican food more
Not to mention that I struggled to figure out what to do with the leftover meat. I tried making “white people tacos” by refrying the same meat but adding a crap ton more oil and salt, heating the tortillas in the oven to get them hard, and then topping them off with spoonfuls of sour cream. It wasn’t authentic, but it was edible.
I still had more meat and ran out of tortillas so I tried to turn them into a super cursed version of American chili
Yeah, it was still edible, but not something I would make again
After I moved in with my aunt in Chicago, I sought out traditional Mexican food in an attempt to change my mind. I knew it had to be better than whatever I’d eaten before.
I hit up a neighborhood spot with high Google reviews, and it was just alright.
I hit up another spot that made the lists on The Infatuation, Eater, and r/chicagofood. That was a disappointment. You would think a place would be mind-blowing if they chopped the meat right in front of you
I wasn’t going to Taco Bell or Chipotle or other chains or Americanized Mexican joints—I wanted the more authentic stuff. And they were letting me down. Everything was just so dry, at times I felt like I would die if I didn’t drink water soon enough a la stranded in the Sahara. The only tacos I had liked up to that point were the contemporary fusion tacos from Little Bad Wolf, so not traditional Mexican.
Anyway, fast forward to when I was concluding a hot chocolate run at Café Jumping Bean in Pilsen. I was supposed to drop by Chiqueolatte but decided three cups of hot chocolate was my upper limit. I wanted something salty. I thought, hey, I’m in the Mexican neighborhood, I might as well give tacos one last chance.
Enter 5 Rabanitos, which was on the same street as Café Jumping Bean and the 18th Pink Line stop. One bus ride and two tacos later, and my entire outlook on Mexican food was changed.
Behold, the carne asada and al pastor taco from 5 Rabanitos 
The al pastor taco was especially good. It was genuinely juicy, flavorful, and oh-so tender. For the first time I had traditional Mexican tacos and didn’t have to reach for my glass of water? If I weren’t already full with three whole cups of hot chocolate—and an appetizer of chips and salsa—I would’ve ordered more.
Half of me was so happy to finally eat good Mexican food. Like, damn, this was delish!
The other half of me was angry at my two white American friends for hyping up Mexican food but giving me some of the most disappointing experiences ever. Especially the one who loves cooking he had the opportunity to blow my mind with authentic homemade tacos but instead made me the culinary equivalent of gravel
And so I started looking for more taco spots. The following day, after hitting up Chiqueolatte in Logan Square, I decided to hit up Taquería Primo Chuki’s. I started with an al pastor taco, carnitas taco, and carne asada taco.
I had a better al pastor taco at 5 Rabanitos, but the carnitas taco was just… wow. So I ordered another carnitas taco. The waitress also recommended a cabeza taco, so I had that too
Guys, that cabeza taco has to be one of my favorites. And get this: since it was a Thursday, most of their tacos were $1.99 each! 
I paid about $13-ish for five tacos before tips, and that was only because the carne asada taco wasn’t discounted. I should’ve gotten three cabeza and two carnitas tacos instead.
And just last Friday, I hit up a more upscale taquería with my Vietnamese grad student friend, the same one mentioned earlier in this post. He had the same sentiment I had regarding Mexican food—he held a mostly neutral opinion and wasn’t impressed. Like, he told me straight up that he never gets a craving for tacos and stuff the way he does for other types food.
After eating the duck carnitas and butternut squash tacos at Taquería Chingón, he immediately said they were the best tacos he’s ever had and went back to the counter to order more 
he was genuinely impressed. And to think he had an eye-opening experience with me, the fellow international student from Asia, and not the born-and-bred American
As for me, I ordered three from the start: duck carnitas (their priciest but also one of their most popular options), skirt steak, and al pastor.
That skirt steak taco was something else. I guess it helped that it was cooked to a tender medium rare. They were all so good. But also so expensive the duck carnitas taco was $9, the skirt steak was $8, and the al pastor was… $6? they were all worth it, imo.
In fact, I’ll get three of those $8 skirt steak tacos.
If you’re wondering why we went to an expensive taquería: Taquería Chingón is located in the West Loop, which was closer to us at the time and is also the upscale foodie part of town. It was getting cold outside and my friend didn’t want to make the longer trip to Pilsen from Streeterville.
And I know there’s more to Mexican food than tacos, but at the same time, I wanted to get that nailed down first before branching out
Now, while I wouldn’t say that Mexican food is the greatest cuisine in the world, I will say that it is much better than I thought it was. And now I’m craving tacos again 