El Dorado Restaurant Taco Review

Tucson Dave’s Taco Trail of Summer 2009

Hi everyone. It had to happen. It can be a bumpy ride on the taco trail. Earlier this week the bar was set so high by our pals at Maico restaurant on 22nd. Today, we experienced the lower end of the bar. We visited an old Tucson classic that has been around for years, El Dorado Restaurant, 1949 S 4th Avenue, the heart of many of Tucson’s classic Mexican food restaurants. It was about 107 degrees outside and being Friday, well, we were craving a beer. My wife Susan joined me again. There was no server to be found. Not a great start. Long story short, our server was hosting, working the bar on the other side of the restaurant and bussing and just generally speaking, over worked. It happens. With the arrival of the beer, it took a little pressure off. I once again stayed with my goal of eating different tacos Today, I had the old fashioned ground beef pattie deep fried taco in the tortilla. (No one tell or forward this to my pals at Blue Cross Blue Shield). I also ordered a cabeza taco. For those not knowing cabeza, the meat comes from the head of a steer and is cooked for hours and hours and the bones and gristle are removed so that you have delicate meat that is shredded and simmered in broth. It can be really good. I chowed down the cabeza taco and someone had forgotten to remove the gristle stuff. Kind of nasty. I moved into the hamburger patty taco. My pal Doug Buck makes these at home and if inside the house, the cooking smell stays on my shirt for days. The memory lingers. His are the best. This one was pretty bad. Someone in the kitchen forgot most of the patty for the taco. About this time, I started eyeing my wife’s plate. She had ordered the machaca taco plate of three machaca tacos. I know she can’t eat them all. Machaca is usually made from chuck roast with spices and cooked for hours and then shredded and often crisped on a grill (for drying) and then fried hot for placement in the corn tortilla. Susan’s first comment was, “yours are so much better”. What a love story. I almost cried. Needless to say, these were salty, damp, over done and generally speaking, just not very good. But hey, the salsa on the table was good. The waitress kind of wondered why I was taking pictures. She never asked. Warning. The pictures make the food look better than it really was. Out the door with two beers and food, total bill was $20.00. I kept wondering how many lengua tacos I could buy back at Maico’s.

Don’t know where the next stop is, but I have an idea.