Eddy's Cantina

Address: Lane.450, Alley.3, No.1 , Zhong shan Road (Tienmu), Taipei, Taiwan

Telephone: (02)2873-7612

Hours: Mon:11:30-9:00; Wed-Sun:11:30-9:00

So I guess the search will have to continue.  When asked about my move back to Taiwan from a life spent in America, I will always offer up what I miss most from the place I called home.  It begins with my friends of course, then takes a turn on the highway to longing for those private drives where your eyes can just stare down the road without the fear of a school of motorcycles descending upon you and acting like you're a stationary object.  

That's all well and good, but for the purposes of this blog and for you dear reader, what's important is what I miss next, and that is the otherworldly Mexican food that seems to exist in all corners of California.  I grew up in San Diego (where our Mexican brethren treated the border like an invisible line) where the Mexican food was just absolutely sublime.  Cheap, hearty, and full of flavors, the Mexican population of my adopted home really knew how to make a mean burrito.  

I guess I never truly appreciated the difficulty of making profound, soul shaking burritos and tacos until I ventured further and further away from San Diego.  Suffice to say that Taiwan is a long ways away from the beaches of Southern California, and while the food here is completely amazing in so many ways, the Mexican cuisine I've had up until now is utterly lacking.  Eddy's Cantina serves perfectly acceptable fare, but from what I heard from the mouths of others before venturing there myself, I had expected I had finally found my oasis in the barren landscape.  I was wrong, and like I said.. the search continues.   Let's get down to business.  

Nachos and little refreshment.  

Eddy's Cantina is located in Tien Mu (天母) where the streets are filled with the footsteps of foreigners.  I remember thinking when I was younger that Tien Mu is where most of the foreigners in Taiwan lived, and perhaps that was true at one point, but through the years, and with the proliferation of English teaching institutions, the population of foreigners seem to be more evenly distributed throughout the city and country.  I bring this up because the location of Eddy's now seems to be a bit out of the way, whereas once it would have made perfect sense.  For many people, hiking it out all the way to Tien Mu is quite the journey, so while there is a nice built in audience for their cuisine in Tien Mu, Eddy's is cutting itself from a new younger crowd by being where it is situated... just a thought.

Soft Tacos

Mexican food is beautiful in its simplicity.  I'm not sure whether to be critical in their lack of ingredients or to applaud because on occasion just those few ingredients are enough to make a dish sing.  Tortilla, Meat, cheese, tomatoes, beans, rice, lettuce, onions.. and really... that is about it.  Sure, I'm definitely making a point by exaggerating a little, but.. it really is only a slight exaggeration.

But you know what? It doesn't matter, because making simple food taste awesome is the highest complement that can really be achieved in cooking.  To be honest, I don't know what it is that separates the run of the mill Mexican food from the ones that make your mouth water and your taste buds rejoice, but there is definitely something.. and you'd figure it wouldn't be so hard to figure it out.  It is probably in the freshness of the ingredients, the way the colors work together, the smell.. basically you just want to be attacked by your senses all at once.  I apologize and am somewhat embarrassed to be waxing poetic about what amounts to a meat log... but that's how much I miss awesome Mexican food, and I long for it to exist here in Taiwan.

Burrito

Now let's get into some specifics about Eddy's and why is it that I find their particular creations to be perfectly tasty, but still altogether lacking in some crucial areas.  The simplest is in the presentation of the food itself.  I just thought that Eddy's food didn't look visually stunning, I realize we are talking about simple Mexican food here, and if I was getting it to go, there would be no such gripe, but when i'm dining in at a mexican restaurant... the cheese should be melting over the meats, and the colors should be vibrant and bright.  The food just looked slightly dead on arrival and somewhat bulky.. if that is the right choice of words.  There seemed to be a bad ratio between tortilla and ingredients that didn't made me go ooooh~ at first glance.

The nachos and quesadilla were pedestrian and this type of quality can easily be found in any sports bar or TGIFs.  But then again, nachos and quesadillas are just fillers and are almost always decent where ever you have them, the bigger problem I had was with Eddy's burrito, because to me.. a burrito is what makes or breaks your average Mexican restaurant.  First off, it was flat.. and not nearly spherical enough.  There was too much rice, and the meat was not grilled very well and was somehow simultaneously a bit too soggy yet dry (due to the heavy handedness of the beans and rice most likely).  To sum it up even quicker, I found the burrito at Eddy's the be the most singular disappointment of the night, and while I accept everything else was on a sliding scale from decent to good in taste, the burrito really left me feeling cold.

Hard shelled tacos (best thing we had) and quesadilla.

Even with all the negativity I spewed in Eddy's direction, the truth of the matter is that I would most certainly return, but that speaks to the current state of Mexican food in Taiwan, and not to the quality of their food.  The restaurant itself is decorated simply in colors that you associate with Mexico.  There is a nice little outside patio area where we sat for our meal, but really, I would've been much happier squatting in the corner holding a flash light to see what I was eating as long as the food was up to the quality that I yearn for.  

I am fully aware that oceans and miles separate me from my childhood, but somethings you cling onto because there is no point in forgoing them because it can easily be replicated if it was just done right.  So many cuisines have been brought here to Taiwan over the last decade or two, and they have been done with the excellence that they deserve.  So this is why I will keep looking and praying that under the next rock, I'll find a carne asada burrito that I can savor fully, because I refuse to believe that if other worldly fare can be done right.. then so can the simple burrito.  Sadly, today was not that day.

Overall Eddy's Cantina receives:

-Til Next Time-

Macho Tacos - A Rant: A Voice in the WIlderness

Machos Tacos.. this isn't about you as much as its about the dire dire state of Mexican food in our fine nation.  I don't know why its so difficult to create a fantastic burrito.  There's a joke that says Mexican food is just the same ingredients repackaged differently..... funny because it's so true.  Cheese, rice, beans, salsa, guacamole, tortillas, meat and sour cream...that's it, that's basically all is needed to make your favorite Mexican dishes.  Am I to believe that our cheese and meats are somehow inferior? That the delicate art of burrito rolling and tortilla flattening are somehow lost to us? I refuse to believe that, yet until further evidence is presented to me, that is the sad world that we are living in.  A world in which I cannot get a fantastic burrito in Taiwan.

Now, I fully realize the law of supply and demand, and that in this case, there just might not be that much demand for Mexican food here.  But i can not be the lone voice crying in the wilderness, and if Machos Tacos is somewhere near the top of the Mexican food pyramid, then we need to take a wrecking ball to it and start from the bottom up.
To be perfectly honest, the food wasn't terrible and i enjoyed it perfectly fine:

pardon the use of the ketchup.

It's just that i've had so much better, and i don't see where the difficulty arises from.  Apparently there is a algorithm that only Mexicans are privy to in their distribution of ingredients.  As you can see from the picture of the carnitas burrito, the meat is a little bit dry and the coloring just isn't particularly appetizing.  

It is my contention that it is easier to produce a quality taco/quesadilla/ etc. than it is to create the work of food art that is a magnificent burrito.  The meat should be slightly charred, one half of it shouldn't fall through the bottom during consumption, the aforementioned ingredients ratio needs to be spot on... i mean really.. how hard can it be? (honestly, i don't know.. someone please inform me).  

So to sum up, Machos Tacos is fine and I'm almost definitely go back sooner rather than later, but the national crisis of middling to decent Mexican food goes on... the search will continue. Until next time.