THERE are fewer and fewer things you can be sure of in the big, bad world these days – or more and more if you that doesn’t suit you.
Don’t like the facts of a matter? Just present your own, lie through your teeth and pretend “post-truth” doesn’t mean lying through your teeth.
Things were so much simpler when it was only opinions that were open to evisceration.
You like (insert whatever here)? What’s wrong with you? Monster! All good-natured stuff, all a matter of taste. But some matters of taste have got real life science to back them up.
If raw coriander makes you wonder why anyone would add something to their dinner that tastes like a bar of soap wrapped in tinfoil, it’s probably because you carry the OR6A2 gene that affects the way you detect the smell of certain adledehydes. Obviously.
La Taqueria sits up a flight of stairs in the middle of Belfast city centre, a clutch of wooden tables under Day of the Dead imagery staring out from walls that scream “Mexico!”
And when Mexico sits down at the table the scream of “coriander!” can’t be far behind. Albeit in Spanish.
The mere sight of the stuff carpeting dishes arriving at neighbouring tables was enough to send a shiver down this OR6A2er’s spine but it needn’t have done.
No adlehehyde tolerance? No problem. Not being able to climb inside the palate of corianderphile means I can’t imagine how a herb plenty of (monstrous) people think is a zesty treat would have made our meal any better.
To be fair, I can’t imagine how anything would have made it any better.
The empanadas were pastry pockets of sloppy cheese and pickled jalapenos, rich and savoury with a lime-heavy pickled cabbage and a perfectly seasoned guacamole – a trick that’s more difficult to pull off than some Mexican places think – providing sharp and cold contrast.
Not to be outdone on the sharp and cold front was a frozen margarita that tasted far more of tequila than most you’ll find on this side of the Atlantic and a seriously good pisco sour.
They were running low on pisco and it was the last one they could make on the first Wednesday evening of 2017. It was probably for the best.
Three carnitas tacos came topped with some raw onion and mercifully bereft of the Herb-That-Must-Not-Be-Named.
The pork might have begun cooking in 2016. It collapsed in on itself, all sweet and fat with occasional bursts of skin crispness and crunch from the onions.
Good on its own, wrapped up in the soft corn tortillas, it hit another level combined with the selection of salsas: a beer and tomato effort with mild smoke-tinged heat, a zippy green tomato and chili number and a clean-out-your-pipes roasted habanero firecracker.
There may also have been another margarita in there somewhere.
As well as tacos – running through braised beef, steak, a couple of varieties of chorizo and mushrooms – there were quesadillas and quesos fundidos, a fondue that went off the rails on its gap year and took a liking to pisco sours.
Mine was full of nopales – the prickly pear cactus – which may have been green beans if you weren’t quite sure but had enough of something different about them to make sure you couldn’t be quite sure.
Chopped raw tomato and onion, as well as those salsas, provided a counterpoint to the cheese delivery system, with blistered flour tortillas providing the cutlery.
Dessert runs to a just one rice pudding, which they didn’t have anyway, although there is an extensive tequila list and also a selection of Mexican soft drinks, including an interesting tamarind option and a cola that somehow managed to evoke iconic Donegal tipple Football Special despite being produced thousands of miles away and south of a very different border.
THE BILL
Empanada x2 - £6
Carnitas tacos - £9
Nopales queso fundidos - £10.50
Frozen margarita x2 - £15
Pisco sour - £7.50
Soft drink x2 - £7
Coffee - £2.50
Total - £57.50
:: La Taqueria, 53 Castle Street, Belfast, BT1 1GH. 0774 878 6654. www.lataqueriabelfast.co.uk
