If you subscribe to Netflix, you can watch a new episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations from the Netflix website. The show is the Mexico episode on Volume 6. In the first part of the show, Anthony and a few others spend alot of time going around eating tacos. As usual, all that taco voyeurism made me want to eat tacos, so I finished watching and made some scrambled egg tacos with onions. 

In my upcoming Taco cookbook, I wax about tacos becoming the global snack food of the twenty-first century, much like pizza took the world in the twentieth century. Here’s some evidence from a recent QSR.com press release that a restaurant chain called The Taco Maker plans to take their concept global. I don’t know anything about them except that they plan to grow their brand globally. This interests me greatly because these may be the gateway tacos that introduce people across the world to tacos. I checked out their website and it has a super chain-y vibe, though, to their credit, they have soft tacos along with their crisp shell tacos. As many of you taco lovers know, a hard shell taco can be wonderful, provided the shells are made fresh. I really can’t abide by pre-made, preservative-infused tortilla shells.

For those of us who need a few tips on how to warm up their tortillas, Gourmet magazine has posted a short video clip on just how to do it. So give them a click for a little tutorial.

If you’ve been following the food truck scene nationally, you’ll know about these hipster food vendors and their followers Twittering about their cities. As a long time taco truck patron, I find this craze to be pretty cool in theory. Anything that brings street food to the people of the USA has to be at least partly good. However, I don’t live anywhere near the grooviest food trucks, and I’m certain that I wouldn’t drive across town and wait for hours for whatever food they were selling. Last time I was a groupie waiting for hours was for Prince tickets back in the 80′s. So what does this all mean? Once the hoopla dies down, and if the owners and cooks can stand it when the spotlight goes out, then there will be some nice additions to the food scene. Personally, I dig the taco trucks for their consistency in both location and quality. Maybe these super gauche trucks will be the gateway experience to get people to try tacos from trucks other than Kogi and their ilk. If you care about such things, read this Grub Street article about food truck backlash in New York.

In closing, this is probably the coolest taco news of the week. From Grub Street, we read that Rockaway Taco is making tacos at an underground (as in clandestine) swimming pool club in Brooklyn called Macro-Sea Pools. I checked out Rockaway Taco’s website and they have a solid little scene out there on Long Island. I like the look of the place, and the food on their Flickr photostream looks really tasty, though it hurts a bit to see three dollar tacos on a menu. So these guys are making tacos, or made tacos, at the secret pool location. This NY Times article explains it all. The essence of the scene is summed up well in the Times piece, “The idea, said David Belt, a real estate developer and the president of Macro-Sea, the company behind the pools, was not to create an exclusive party destination but to experiment with underused space and materials, repurposing them with urban renewal in mind.” Having lived for 12 years on a 20 acre homestead in Oregon that I only semi-jokingly call Trailer Trash Tuscany, I’m all about reusing materials and creating spaces that provide a sense of well-being and conviviality. Plus, underground cafes and theatres just fill me with joy. So, the combination of an underground pool club and tacos makes me tingle. Cheers to you people out there in New York!