Friday, August 1, 2008

Camino Real (Pflugerville)

(Note: This is NOT the same "Camino Real" as the one in the Spicewood Springs area of Austin that we refer to as "Dave's place". It just has the same name.)

I'm struggling with whether I should even write this blog entry. I guess I will go ahead since my experience here was fine.

(The reason I almost didn't is that I found some really terrible reviews for this restaurant just now while looking for their website - they don't appear to have one - and I may never go back. I don't know. Anyway, here is a link to Google's page for Camino Real. If you poke around there you will find some of the reviews I mentioned.)

I drive by here every day on my way to work, but I just noticed a couple of days ago that they are open for breakfast and were advertising breakfast tacos.

I was the only customer for the entire 20-25 minutes I was there and they were still slow. Not a great start.

Camino Real has a fairly large breakfast menu. The tacos are all 2 items and cost $1.50, with extra items 25 cents each, so I settled for Sausage, Egg, Beans and Cheese at $2.00 each. The waitress said they were "normal" size, so I ordered 2. Total with Dr. Pepper and tip was $7.00.

When they arrived - it took 10-15 minutes! - I was a bit disappointed at first. The tacos were small to medium in size (2 tacos were still smaller than 1 from Ken's) and seemed to have more beans than anything else and hardly any cheese but I decided to dig in. The salsa was very tasty but I didn't want to put very much on because the beans were already kinda runny and I didn't want to make it too much worse.

Anyway, overall the tacos were pretty good. The tortillas were fresh and very good and the overall flavor was great. Because of the beans, the tacos were fairly messy, but they were served on a plate and not foil, so the mess was easier to deal with.

I enjoyed my breakfast but I'm not sure yet whether I'll return considering the awful reviews I read.

  • Size: small to medium
  • Goodness: very good
  • Value: meh - good but relatively expensive - and did I mention slow?
Grade: B+

Friday, March 21, 2008

Rudy's Country Store and Bar-B-Q

Yes, kids, the quest is still alive.

Life interfered with my search for the Ultimate Breakfast Taco for a while, but I'm back on track. Today's journey took me to Rudy's Country Store and Bar-B-Q.

Now, I have to say that although I've never been crazy about Rudy's, my wife raves about their breakfast tacos, so I vowed a while back to give it a try.

As I discovered this morning, you can get tacos at Rudy's in 2 different ways: pre-made or custom order. When you walk in, there's a large section of pre-made tacos and a dedicated checker person. These tacos seemed to be limited to 2 ingredients and I don't know what they cost. (If someone adds it to the comments, I'll mod the post...)

To custom order, you go to the normal order line and tell them what you want. The service was quick and helpful - the guy who took my order spent time explaining their process to me so I didn't feel as lost as I do when I'm there for lunch.

Let me interrupt myself here for a second to tell you that Rudy's has great Sweet Tea. Check out Dave's review.

The tacos were fairly large, which is to say bigger than the fast-food tacos I've tried and smaller than Ken's. My standard taco (sausage, potato, egg, bean and cheese) was OK and came up to $2.81 and the large tea was $1.79, for a total of $4.60. That's a full dollar more than Ken's for less food.

The taste was pretty good, although I much prefer refried beans to whole beans on a taco and the sausage was diced instead of ground. I know those are personal preferences, but hey - this is my blog. The salsa was OK, but not great.

I also felt compelled by the location to try a chopped beef taco. I had beef, egg and cheese. I didn't like it, and didn't eat much of it, so I decided not to include it in the ratings for cost or size.

Overall I'd say Rudy's made a good effort; much better than expected.

  • Size: medium to large
  • Goodness: good
  • Value: good - decent food at a decent price
Overall, I'd give Rudy's an A-, which puts them firmly in second place. Congrats!

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Tacodeli

Today I had breakfast tacos for lunch - at a place I've never been before: Tacodeli. This was after the annual Cub Scouts Pinewood Derby. Matthew took home 2 trophies this year (his last year in Cub Scouts). Congratulations, Matthew! :-)

Tacodeli was a little bit intimidating because it was so busy and the menu is fairly large. I was afraid that if I took too long I would soon be hearing "No taco for you. NEXT!" Because of that, I decided to try to order something as close as possible to my "standard" taco: sausage, potato, egg, beans and cheese.

"Black bean paste OK?" Umm, no.

"The potatoes are mashed, OK?" Sure, just don't "NEXT!" me.

It was unclear how big to expect these tacos to be. The guy taking my order said you should get "at least 2 or 3", so I ordered 3. I have no idea what this all cost because my lovely wife, Celeste, paid for lunch. (Thanks, honey!)

OK, so just in case you missed it, yes they actually put mashed potatoes on their tacos. Sounds weird and changes the texture of the taco considerably but it wasn't bad. The only problem with these tacos was their small size and almost complete lack of sausage. Still, the flavor was good and the salsa (they have several types) was very tasty.

  • Value: I'm kind of guessing since I don't know what the actual cost was, but I think this was on the expensive end of the range, so I'd have to rate the value as mediocre.

  • Size: tiny to small

  • Goodness: good, but not great.


I'll definitely try out the Tacodeli again sometime, but in my opinion it's not at the top of the list.


Grade: B

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Chick-fil-A

OK, so nobody in their right mind goes to Chick-fil-A thinking "Hmm, I think I'll have a breakfast taco." And rightly so, it turns out.

Just so I'm clear, I love Chick-fil-A. Love their chicken sandwich. Love their chicken nuggets. Love their Sweet Tea. Love their chicken biscuit, sausage biscuit, chicken minis.

But the breakfast taco just plain sucked.

I didn't even finish the one I bought. It was unpleasant and cold, filled almost entirely with eggs and bell peppers. I don't even want to get into the rest of the disappointment. Suffice it to say that I will never, ever get another taco at Chick-fil-A.

(That doesn't mean I will stop going there; not by a mile. I still love the place, but they should just remove breakfast tacos from their menu before someone gets hurt.)

Grade: D (just because of the Sweet Tea, otherwise: F)