I finally made it to Pang Taco tonight, situated on Wenchang Street amidst all the furniture shops.
The staff were friendly and, while the space was not large, the high ceiling helped create an open feeling. I felt I was off to a good start.
I ordered elote (which I enjoyed) and a pulled pork taco (which I did not). The taco was dominated by some thickish garlicky sauce—not at all my thing, and not at all in line with the strengths of Mexican food where the fresh deliciousness of the ingredients shine.
I then order the “grilled vegetable” taco to see if I was just unlucky with the pulled pork variant. This one consisted of stir fried veggies (yes, apparently cooked Chinese style) including cabbage, a green veggie, and a sweetish pineapple salsa, with the whole shebang again dominated by some garlicky sauce.
I left the shop feeling frankly repelled by this sweetish garlicky combination, and made a bee-line on my bike to My Croissant by Guillaume located nearby to find something, anything, to stuff into my mouth to try to get rid of that lingering garlicky taste.
Based on my experience, the polite comments made earlier by @tango42 and others about this shop—calling it “just good and nothing else”—could perhaps be qualified to say: the Pang guys have a plan, they want to be “creative,” they are friendly at least to me, and their vision is completely not aligned with how I want to enjoy the brilliance of Mexican food or for that matter any food at all, except for the elote.
The cake I am eating now from My Croissant, washed back with strong black tea, is however pretty damned good—a soothing balm to what was for me a largely unpleasant culinary experience.
Guy