Mexican/TexMex restaurant with manly meat portions

Make your own tacos , even I can make something more substantial and tasty than many of those places and I’m the worst cook going.

Macho Tacos has never been good. I actually can’t believe they are still open. The best tacos I’ve ever had here was over near the night market off An He. They were open like 10 months, but it was legit good. For whatever reason, locals just don’t seem to have a taste for it, but no one’s ever been able to give me a good reason why. shrug

Most of my friends say the same about Machos, but when we go on Taco Tuesday, no one complains too much about it since the price reflects the quality.

Tried Nala’s recently. Wow. Thumbs up. Great taste, soft taco’s are large, burrito is huge cannot even get my mouth around one end, fresh ingredients. The menu has all options including adding extra meat for the manly portion. Too bad only a few seats but I carried out anyway.

Can’t even mention them in the same conversation as the other place.

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How’s the price??

Duplicate.

Every item at Nala’s appears to be between NT$99 and NT$139.

would they happen to have hot queso sauce for burritos?

This is why i cook western food at home. It is just wrong at most places, and I’ve learned that many things are quite easy to do at home. With that said, Burger and Co has the best burger in Taipei. I also like the Fish Tacos at the Corner Office. Pricey but worth it. I’ll have to try Nala’s.

Looks like Nala’s has a few of their own homemade sauces but I’m not sure. They are listed on the menu.

Tried Twinkeyz Tacos today. Thumbs up. Great taste, soft taco focused but with other items, large amounts of meat on taco, fresh ingredients. Plenty of seats and great atmosphere with music and TV. Can view nice clean kitchen through glass windows. Many drink options. Taco’s are NT$99 and some good meal pricing.

Glad you liked both my suggestions :smile:

I’ve yet to try out Nala’s, but now I’m pretty excited.

I think the deal killer is the beans. Folks here are trained to view beans as something sweet–red bean, green bean, pick your poison. When beans are salted and combined with pork or other meats, it leads to some pretty serious culinarily dissonance (sort of a mirror image of how the white man views the ubiquitous and dreaded pork floss buns in Taiwan’s bakeries).

That’s my take!

Guy

This is certainly the best explanation I’ve heard to date.

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In Taoyuan, about two blocks from the train station, there is a little Mexican stand run by a very friendly Taiwanese gal named Yuchia. She does beef and chicken tacos, burritos, enchiladas… all very reasonable price (70 NT for a beef burrito), loaded with meat. I visit at least once a week. Not open on Sundays or Mondays.

What about ham and beans, pork and beans, beans with bacon at breakfast, Chili… aren’t there tons of bean and meat dishes and old staples from around the world?

Sure of course, but not so much here. OP is right, beans generally equals sweet here. My gf just confirmed, not sure why I never asked her before, she’s had plenty of Mexican food and never eats the beans. Case closed for me. L O L

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Aren’t salted or heavily flavored beans used in Sichuan and Hunan food, often as a garnish? But yes, my wife is similar with beans: she’s grown to like chickpeas and lentils, but always looks askance at savory bean dishes.

I tried Nala’s today. Enjoyed it - not great, but a tasty burrito; not quite as good as the one time I’ve had Chipotle in North America. The meat quantity was fine for me, but anyone who cares much about it will want to get the double portion. I’d definitely have preferred less rice and more beans. They asked if I wanted it spicy, and I said yes, but I didn’t register any heat at all.

I think Eddy’s Cantina in Tianmu is significantly better, but that’s out of the way for a lot of people.

Note that Nala’s isn’t so much a restaurant as a stall fronting on the sidewalk. There are two chairs at the bar/counter, but no interior space.

I tried Nala’s today too. I didn’t like it and I’ll just leave it at that.

Can I ask what you tried? I swung by Nala’s the other day and had a burrito with carnitas and black beans with sour cream, with red salsa. It was pretty solid, nicely balanced, hitting–at least for me–the sweet spot between not-too-heavy and not-too-light.

And to get back to Andrew0409’s original query: I would not really call Nala’s burritos loaded with “manly meat portions” but it certainly didn’t feel skimpy. As I think someone else mentioned, they also offer a double meat option for the hard-core carnivores among us.

Guy