A couple weeks ago we went to Taqueria El Rey Del Taco with our favorite Californian, Vasilios. This is a taco joint that I’d heard good things about, but I’d never been to before.
The place is a lot bigger on the inside than it seemed to be from outside.
We got settled in with a nice waitress and some chips and salsa. They were pretty good, too. We had a hard time trying to figure out what to order, but we eventually got it together.
Adam and I ordered three tacos, El Maremoto, and a squash blossom quesadilla. We probably should have stopped at the tacos and El Maremoto, but I really wanted to try the quesadilla. We got a lot of squash blossoms early this year, but we got squash bugs before I got enough squash to want to experiment with blossoms.
Tacos: chorizo, carnitas, and carne asada. $2.00 each.
The tacos were all good. The chorizo was tasty without being soaked in orange grease, which is always a plus.
El Maremoto: grilled shrimp, steak, octopus, and squid with bell peppers, onions, and cheese.
The Maremoto, a steak and seafood kind of fajita plate was quite good, though I was most surprised by the charro beans that came with it. They were phenomenal! So good. Charro beans are like mexican cowboy/ranch beans and they can have onions, peppers, garlic, bacon, ham and other tasty, tasty things in there. I’m not sure exactly what things were in these charro beans besides pintos and bacon, but whatever it was, it was great!
Charro beans that come with El Maremoto.
Squash blossom quesadilla. $3.00.
The squash blossom quesadilla wasn’t very remarkable, but it’s another ingredient I can check off my mental bucket list of things I should eat. I think I’ll try some fried, stuffed squash blossom fritters at some point before I give up entirely on eating them.
Vasili’s tacos… I don’t know which ones he got exactly.
Vasili’s proclamation about Taqueria El Rey Del Taco is as follows: “3 stars. It was good, not great. They forgot my beans. :(” Poor Vasili. And the beans were so delicious, too.
Adam and I think that Taqueria El Rey Del Taco is a lot like your typical pay-a-little-get-a-lot mexican joint, but while the majority of those places sacrifice quality to achieve the price point, the quality of the food here is higher than that average. Despite having heard good things about it already, we were still pleasantly surprised.
If only we could have come a little later, we would have been treated to live mariachi music. 3.5 stars.
Taqueria El Rey Del Taco
5288 Buford Highway NE
Doraville, GA 30340
emily
Nerd. Foodie. Gamer. Homecook. Perpetual planner. Gardener. Aspiring homesteader. Direct response graphic designer. I use too many damn commas.
I went there this week for the first time. This place is rated as one of the 2 or 3 best taco joints on BuHI by some blogs.
Got a bad waitress. I kept waiting for chips and salsa, but none arrived until my meal came. When I asked, she said you had to order chips and salsa separately. Strike one.
I got one asada taco and once carnitas and a side order of rice. The hand made tortillas were delicious! The asada taco was average. The carnitas taco was outstanding. I should have order a 3rd taco. No refill on my drink and being pretty much ignored by the waitress I left as soon as I finished.
Summary: tacos are really good. I will give the joint another try and hope for different waitress.
Hi Jorge and welcome!
I’m sorry to hear about your lackluster experience at TeRdT. I hope that you did just get a bad waitress and that they haven’t decided to start charging for chips and salsa. Since she also ignored you later, maybe she just said that because she forgot the chips and didn’t want to look bad!
If you go back again, let me know how it goes. Thanks for reading!