Friday, July 18, 2008

Tongue in Cheek

Tonight we tried a small, family-owned place that just opened this week. It's called Tropical Crazy Fruits and More (no website yet). We actually stopped in earlier this week, but only ordered a couple of their many fruit drinks. Tonight we ordered food. Though we weren't hungry, we ate anyway to show our support to a local business.

Having grown up with entrepreneurs as parents, I warmly smiled at the nostalgic sight of 4 family members gathered around the business' credit-card machine trying to figure out how it operated.

First off, the drinks were delicious and refreshing. So far, we've tried mango, papaya and tamarind. Both the mango and papaya were merely fresh fruit, ice and bottled water mixed in a blender. The tamarind had a little sugar added, but that's expected with the sourly sweet fruit. I understand that this sort of drinkable simplicity may be lost on those accustomed to sugar-laden baked goods. For us, however, it was a welcomed blast from the past, since we both grew up with this type of fruit drink as our primary form of dessert (though this might explain my seemingly insatiable sweet tooth as an adult).

As for the food, we each ordered a taco; my wife got beef fajita and I got tongue. That's right. I ordered a beef tongue taco and enjoyed it...at least I thought it was beef tongue...it could have been pork tongue. Either would have been just as succulent. Tongue is an under-appreciated meat. It's very rich and more difficult to ruin than other cuts of meat in the cooking process. Case in point, though the diced tongue in my taco was slightly charred, resulting in an overly crisp exterior, it still was very tender. If this were beef flank, the meat would have been ruined. But I digress.

Both tacos were served on warm, toasted flour tortillas and topped off with freshly chopped onions and cilantro, which did a great job of cutting through the buttery tortillas, enhancing the flavor of the meats. The accompanying sauce seemed to be a spicy lime mixture meant to add a zesty kick to the tacos. IMO, though it did add a subtle zing, it's not a must-have topping. All in all, this is one mom-n-pop shop that can count on our return business.

Behold the crazy tongue taco. Since both tacos looked nearly identical, I only posted the tongue taco.

No comments: