South Texas’s most accessible menu item — the humble bean and cheese taco — can be dauntingly problematic for San Antonio’s sparse vegetarian population. Among local foodstuffs it is unmatched for economy and portability, a working musician’s dream. Unfortunately, it is also usually tainted with Tex-Mex cuisine’s most ubiquitous additive: bacon fat.
“Ninety-nine percent of Mexican food has bacon grease in it,” scolds Helen Velesiotis, proprietor of Olmos Park’s acclaimed Taco Taco. “We don’t do that.”
Velesiotis and Taco Taco are among an ever-growing number of progressive central SA eateries catering to vegetarians (and good health in general) by offering lard-free beans. Several other formal restaurants offer veggie beans as well (Guajillo’s, El Mirador, et cetera), but hard-rocking, hard-drinking music aficionados demand the most casual nooks to nurse their nightclub hangovers on a Saturday morning for pocket change.
It’s hard to exaggerate how well Taco Taco does everything they do. So, hyperbole aside, their refried beans taste like they were trod upon by tiny gods’ feet. They’ve concocted the perfect beans-and-cheese combo, upon which there can be no improvement: deliciously and delicately flavored refried beans (lubed with pure vegetable oil), American cheese, swathed in their amazing corn tortillas. The flour tortilla version is much bigger, but don’t get greedy — the corn alternative packs an infinitely more delectable taste-punch.
Cascabel, Southtown’s traditionalist jewel, was recently numbered among Texas Monthly’s 50 best Mexican restaurants in the state. Among other fare, they offer the mysterious and elusive cuitlacoche — a black corn fungus also known as “corn smut.” The bean and cheese tacos are über-authentic, served in two overlapping corn tortillas with black beans and queso fresco as the only options. They offer several interesting salsa choices, each bringing their own version of tangy and spicy. The wait staff is attentive and patiently eager to translate any intimidating menu items into English for you monolinguists.
Green has established itself as the only strictly vegetarian restaurant in San Antonio. Regrettably, most of their menu items reside on the blander side of the street. Railing against this is the treasonously flavorish bean-and-cheese taco. While this variance ought to be well taken, the pendulum has swung too far in the case of their refried beans, more appropriately described as “peculiar tasting.” They nearly defy culinary description, unless “over-blended paste of oniony muck” sounds culinary.
Also warranting inclusion (since they’re the only other certifiably veggie-friendly taco place in town) is Alamo Heights’ fixture Adelante, which has devoted itself to healthy (and mostly tasteless) Tex-Mex cuisine. Adelante’s version is only really notable for apocryphally including tomatoes and lettuce at no extra charge. While Las Salsas represents a mystery among the restaurants visited: one gets the sense the wait staff has been instructed to enthusiastically answer in the affirmative to any and all questions asked of them. Their tacos are good (and topped with the desirable shredded American cheese), but suspiciously baconesque. What with overwrought, Morrisey-inspired lyrical rants against meat-eating reverberating in our mucial vocabularies, it might be best to steer clear of any ambiguity. •
