National Taco Day

Happy National Taco Day! To celebrate, I went over to Choza Taqueria at Gotham West, since Choza was offering a free taco with every meal for the occasion. An order of tacos there included three tacos, so with the free one, I was able to get about 2/3 of the taco options on the menu. This wasn't my first time at Choza, but it had been a little bit since my last visit so I couldn't remember which of the fillings was my favorite. Luckily they let you mix and match.

For the National Taco Tuesday promotion, you could choose between the chicken and garbanzo tacos. I went with the garbanzo taco (technically garbanzos y hongos - garbanzos and mushrooms) since I had already ordered the chicken as part of the set. The garbanzo and mushroom taco was made with Mexican crema, salsa negra, and avocado. I liked this one, and the best part was the smoky sauce. The mushrooms were very juicy, and the addition of the chickpeas made it even heartier.

The pollo taco at Choza is kind of unique. I liked the way it differed from your standard chicken taco, combining citrus-roasted chicken, charred pineapple, buttermilk-tomatillo salsa, queso fresco, and cilantro. Pineapple is more commonly associated with pork and al pastor, but it complemented the citrus-flavored chicken here pretty well. I also liked the buttermilk-tomatillo salsa, a combination of flavors you don't normally find in a taco.

The third taco I tried was the chorizo, which was spicy Mexican pork sausage, poblano peppers, salsa macha, queso fresco, and cilantro. Of the four, this was definitely the taco with the most powerful flavors with lots of spice from the chorizo and the poblano peppers. It was a little salty because it was chorizo, but not too bad. I really liked having the poblano peppers on top adding a lot of freshness.

The last taco was the carnitas - braised pork shoulder with tamarind, chipotle crema, escabeche, and cilantro. The flavor of the meat here was pretty good, but the cabbage on top dominated the flavor and texture of the taco a little bit. I'm not really one to complain about extra vegetables to balance things out though, so I was okay with that.

Even though the tacos from Choza looked on the small side on the platter, they were pretty filling. Four was more than enough for lunch for me. I think my favorite was probably the chicken, but they all were pretty good. Out of all the options at Gotham West, Choza is one of the most affordable, so I see more tacos in my future.