Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Taco Taco Taco...



Tacos Al Carbon
107 Peach Street
Hammonton, NJ 08037

One day while in Hammonton, my buddy cancelled on me when we were supposed to try a new taco truck together. I didn’t want to try it without him, but it happened to be on the day that the Tacos y Tortas truck was closed, so I didn’t really have much of an option. So I headed over to Tacos Al Carbon to see if their tacos matched up to the tacos I had experienced the week before at Tacos y Tortas. The truck is quite a bit smaller than the other, and the menu is as well. Each day they have a new menu that they write on a white board in Spanish. Aside from tacos they also offer tortas, tostadas,  and a delicious item called chilaquiles. I opted for two tacos de chicharron and two tacos de carnitas, as well as a mango jarritos. Since it was February, you can imagine how cold it was outside. All of the seating is outside, so I sat down in the wind and waited for my tacos to be ready. They have a bottle opener attached to the truck for the Mexican sodas, so I popped mine open and took a sip. Holy deliciousness! The mango jarritos was the best one I had yet. It was sweet, but it wasn’t overpowering, and the carbonation really was spot on. If you have never had a jarritos before, you really should try them.




My tacos were ready soon thereafter, so I took them and sat down. I was a little disappointed by the lack of filling in them. There was of course double tortillas, which I love, but the filling was minimal. They skimped on the cilantro and onion, and didn’t offer up a lime wedge. It was a little disappointing. I dug into the chicharron tacos first, and I was again disappointed. They didn’t have the texture I was looking for. To me, chicharrones are crispy fried pieces of pork skin, and these were not crispy at all. I am not an expert, but that is what I have come to expect from chicharrones, so I was pretty disappointed by the lack of texture. The sauce they were dressed with was very nice, a combination of peppery and creamy. I definitely was looking for that textural difference, as well as more cilantro and lime juice. 



The carnitas were very tasty, but disappointing in terms of texture as well. I don’t know much about carnitas, but I know that I like mine to be a little bit crispy. These were definitely rendered down as if they had been cooked all day, but they didn’t have that little bit of crunch that I would have liked with them. As with the others, a little bit more of the cilantro, onion and lime juice would have gone a long way to kick these tacos up into another gear. The sauces that they have sitting on the truck are really phenomenal. They were very spicy, one an orange sauce in a bottle, and another green sauce in a molcajete. I doused one of each kind of taco in the sauces to give them a taste and they really heightened the flavor of the tacos. I finished up my tacos and my jarritos and I paid the man in the truck. It was also very reasonably priced. I think it was $8.50 for four tacos and a soda, so a pretty good deal as well. It just didn’t live up to the tacos at the other truck.



Tacos al Carbon deserves two and half pints. They offer up some really good Mexican fare, authentic, tasty and fun, and they really get after what they are going for.  It’s definitely worth a visit, especially if it is on a Monday when Tacos y Tortas isn’t open. I kid, it is definitely worth a shot, so try it and let me know! Cheers!

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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
I am a food lover living in Philadelphia.

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