The Real Deal Part Seven: The Taco Crawl

Here’s an article from Shanghai Magazine in Jan 2009. As expats, we often looked for ways to kill boredom. Most likely, whatever activity we did involved alcohol. The taco crawl was one such event. A dozen foreigners, all wearing sombreros, loaded a rented city bus filled with beer. I can confidently say that this bus held some of the biggest drinkers in Shanghai. A few showed up, still lit from the night before. Fortunately, by 2009, seven places served Mexican (in a city of 27 million). We planned one taco and one margarita at each venue. The problem was that expats gorged themselves whenever someone served international food or liquor, so preventing people from overdosing at the first couple of stops became a losing campaign. By the second stop, it was evident that this would be an ugly day when the food got held up, so the single margarita turned into several. There were still five stops to go. Each venue tried to outdo the previous with better food and heavier pours. Here I am (caught with my sombrero) with the winning Chef Brad Turley. His molé beef tongue taco on a crispy corn tortilla with queso fresco was outstanding and unlike anything experienced in any other restaurant, when most places provided standard Tex-Mex. Beef tongue is a traditional Mexican food found all over Southern California. It’s tasty if you can get over eating tongue. I ate a lot of stranger foods that you can read about in my book (bull penis, anyone?)