100 Favorite Dishes, No. 34: Taco De Jose at El Come Taco

Leading up to September's Best of Dallas® 2017 issue, we're sharing (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes, the Dallas entrées, appetizers and desserts that really stuck with us this year. Some of the best dishes in the world happen at family meal. Traditionally, in the kitchen, it’s the...

By Nick Rallo

August 24, 2017

Jose's Taco is less than three bucks at El Come Taco. El Come Taco

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Leading up to September's Best of Dallas® 2017 issue, we're sharing (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes, the Dallas entrées, appetizers and desserts that really stuck with us this year.

Some of the best dishes in the world happen at family meal. Traditionally, in the kitchen, it’s the staff’s break meal: A home-cooked, gut-warming dish devoured between the rush hours. At El Come Taco, one of Dallas’ best taco joints and a family-run spot for years, everything eats like family meal. There’s pastor, twisting slowly under a sliced pineapple, and a fried tilapia taco, lashed with good crema, that’ll dilate your pupils. One of the best damn tacos at El Come Taco is dad’s dish.

“The recipe’s from my dad. ... It's something to eat at work when there’s no time to cook,” Come Taco owner Luis Villalva says.

These are no canned refried beans. They’re beans smashed into onions and garlic, dusted with salt and a touch of oil, and pressed into cheese with a double-blistered tortilla. A canoe of avocado and some crumbles of Cotija — the Parmesan of Mexico — for texture and a clean, milky saltiness, and you’ve got one of the most surprising, unassumingly delicious tacos you’ll ever have. We Texans are dulled to pallid refried beans. The Taco De Jose will ruin you (in a good way) with smashed beans, rich and creamy, somehow electric in flavor.

El Come Taco, 2513 N Fitzhugh Ave.

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