If you’re sick of the same old lunch, bring the fiesta to your office with Best Tacos Houston catering! You can have a variety of meat, including the smoky richness of asada, the spicy kick of pastor, and the classic simplicity of chicken.

Authentic Mexican Flavors

The flavor profile of authentic Mexican food is rich in savory spices and herbs, unique ingredients like hominy and queso fresco, and a variety of fresh, citrusy flavors that enhance the overall taste experience. In addition to being incredibly delicious, many traditional Mexican dishes offer a balance of healthy ingredients that can help diners feel energized and satisfied after their meal. Beans and other legumes are a source of protein and fiber, while avocados and olive oil provide heart-healthy fats.

For example, in a classic Mexican soup dish known as birria, chicken, red beans, and hominy are all staples of this nourishing meal. A typical authentic birria recipe also includes chiles, which are high in vitamin C and antioxidants. These ingredients are not only full of flavor, but they also contain a variety of essential vitamins and minerals to keep your body in top shape.

As a result, authentic Mexican cuisine is ideal for those who are looking to stay lean and live healthfully. In fact, one of the reasons why so many people enjoy Mexican food is because it offers a great selection of nutritious ingredients.

When you visit Taco Time, you can rest assured that your favorite foods are prepared with a blend of the finest ingredients to create a truly authentic experience. The menu is full of the beloved staples like tacos, burritos, nachos, and salads that are sure to satisfy everyone in your group, but it also features a few innovative items such as Mexi-Fries(r), which are a reinvention of the classic tater tots, and Crisp Burritos, which are hand-rolled fried tacos that come in four varieties.

Taco Time’s founder, World War II Navy veteran Ron Fraedrick, founded the restaurant with a vision of offering high-quality Mexican food at an affordable price that was easy to prepare and fast to serve. He built the brand on this ideal, and today, the chain is owned by global franchisee Kahala Brands and operates in more than 70 locations across the country. The owners at each location still make a point of using the finest ingredients and sticking to recipes that are lovingly created in Mexico itself.

Fresh Ingredients

Located in the Pacific Northwest, Taco Time takes great pride in using fresh ingredients. Rather than stocking frozen or canned products, the franchise aims to keep everything from its condiments and meats to its sauces and toppings in its own stores. This helps ensure that each location has an ample supply of quality ingredients for its dishes. This is also one of the ways that the chain manages to offer a wide variety of tasty taco and burrito options, even in locations that might otherwise have limited menu items.

The cohosts of the Dear Elite Reviewer podcast — Amy Faulkner, James Lim and Melissa Miranda — vehemently disagree about their feelings toward Taco Time. Lim and Faulkner hail from New York, while Miranda is the chef behind Seattle’s Musang restaurant. The (mostly) joking contention quickly became an episode’s theme, and a regular benchmark for the show.

When the hosts sit down to record each episode, they gather in Pelton’s minimalist living room, wearing hats and hoodies bearing local logos like UW and Pagliacci Pizza. They riff on each other with the kind of acerbic wit that could only be honed in the city of their birth.

That sense of place is a core element of the show’s humor, and it is rooted in a love for their home town. It also happens to be the city where Taco Time first went national.

Taco Time has a separate brand for its restaurants outside of Western Washington, which it calls Taco Time International. This other menu reflects the different cultural influences in that part of the state. Cote, for instance, is an ardent critic of the Taco Time International menu. He maintains that he can’t understand the “bizarro-verse” menu, which he describes as being written in a dialect of Taco Time Northwest.

This dislike of the Taco Time International menu spurred Cote to embark on a mission that he calls his “quest” to visit all 77 Taco Time locations in Western Washington. He keeps a meticulous spreadsheet and follows strict rules like eating in the dining room, not the drive-thru, and only counting official visits that have been tracked through the app.

Made-to-Order Burritos & Tacos

A crispy, flavor-packed flour tortilla rolled with beef or chicken and a blend of low-fat white cheese. Served with choice of side.

When Kristine Hepburn, a longtime employee at Taco Time’s Rose Hill location, rolls up each day’s batch of Crisp Burritos, she’s doing the sort of kitchen prep you don’t expect in fast food. She dices fresh tomatoes for the pico de gallo, mixes salsa (both corn and mild red), and makes the day’s hot sauce in a commercial steam kettle. She and her fellow morning shift employees spend about three hours doing the sort of actual cooking you don’t usually see in restaurants like this.

The Taco Time menu is a reflection of Seattle’s broader food culture. The restaurant serves a wide variety of Mexican inspired dishes, but its most beloved menu item is the Crisp Beef Burrito. The burrito is a Seattle original, made with seasoned beef rolled in a crunchy flour tortilla and topped with cheddar cheese. The whole thing is then deep-fried to a delicious crunch.

It’s a dish that reflects the way Seattle used to be, a city that embraced its sports for a sense of identity and community. It’s a Seattle that grew up watching hydroplane races at Seafair, staying up late to watch Almost Live, and chowing down on Crisp Beef Burritos after the Mariners or Seahawks won.

But it’s also a Seattle that continues to evolve, and the newcomers who have recently moved here in record numbers experience the city on a different frequency. These transplants don’t grow up going to Taco Time after football practice or catching a cab to the stadium to get a fish taco on a rainy, windy night.

When podcaster James Lim and Dear Elite Review cohost Amy Faulkner started Talkin’ Taco Time, it wasn’t intended to be a show about Taco Time. But as the show grew, it became a platform for the hosts’ (mostly joking) contention about the place. It’s not that the hosts dislike Taco Time; they just have a very different view of it than the people who grew up here watching hydroplane races at Seafair and listening to the radio jingles of the old-school drive-thru chain.

Variety of Sides

In addition to tacos, burritos and nachos, you can also choose from the likes of hard or soft tortillas; a variety of salsas (both regular and spicy); guacamole (plain, tropical, sweet potato and bacon-and-corn versions are available), and agua frescas (freshly squeezed lime juice with ice and fruit). The restaurant’s signature soups and stews are also a staple, including a warming white chicken chili that can chase away a grey, wet Seattle day and a gut-busting enchilada platter.

Taco Time is a part of the fabric of the city’s culture, so much so that Cote began hosting a podcast called Talkin’ Taco Time in 2018 as a semi-joking spinoff of his regular Dear Elite Reviewer show. The podcast features local musicians and artists as guests, but they often mention their love of the chain, which Cote says serves as an unexpected entry point to discuss a wide range of topics.

The most recent episode focuses on the controversy over Taco Time’s decision to change the name of its top-selling snack, which had long been known as Mexi-Fries. The change came shortly after a year in which plenty of companies examined their blind spots and ways to be anti-racist. When Cote read of the impending rebrand, he thought it had to be an error.

But then he checked the Taco Time app, and sure enough, the company had changed its ordering system to rename the perfectly seasoned and top-selling tater tots as “Mexi Fries.” He and his fellow hosts weighed in with an emergency pod on the topic, and it turns out that changing the name of the menu item is a big deal to people who have been eating them all along.

For many of the podcast’s listeners, loving Taco Time is a badge of Seattle identity. It’s the kind of thing that people wear on tees and hoodies, alongside University of Washington hats, Pagliacci Pizza tees and Rainier Beer shirts. It’s an emblem of a city that once seemed sleepy and isolated but eventually exploded into the national zeitgeist with Frasier and Nirvana, MTV filming a season in town, and the Mariners and Sonics in their primes.