The tacos from Valentina’s Tex Mex BBQ are highly rated. See here, here, and here. We were in Austin recently and stopped by. Here’s how it went.
I ordered a pulled pollo taco and a barbacoa taco. I’ve read in other places that barbacoa is only available on Sundays, so I had to try it. The meat in each taco was excellent, especially the chicken. It was juicy and succulent. Garnished with guacamole and a habanero salsa, each bite was top notch. The barbacoa was also great; it was smoky, but–somewhat shocking to me–I rank Valentina’s barbacoa slightly behind Taconazo. The purist in me assumes that coming off a smoker, the barbacoa at Valentina’s would automatically be better. And it did have an excellent smoky flavor, but Valentina’s barbacoa was less fatty and tender.
But the smokiness and quality of the meat was evident. Inside the truck, I saw a rack of shelves with a variety of foil-wrapped meats. A new brisket was unwrapped while I ordered, and I nearly changed my order. It had a thick, beautiful dark bark, and there’s almost no way the brisket I saw wasn’t delicious. I’d love to try Valentina’s other meat preparations.
Back to the tacos. They are huge; you could have one pulled pollo taco, and it would be a filling, perfect lunch. The fresh flour tortillas are big and are packed full. We ate on-site at a picnic table, but a lot of people were getting the food to go. I’m not sure the tacos would travel well–there’s a lot of juice, whether from the salsa or the meat or both, I’m not sure. If you’re getting things to go, I would insist on salsa on the side. But even on-site, make sure that you put napkins underneath the tacos or have an extra tray to drain the liquid; otherwise, these can become soggy and hard to manage. If you get two, you might even want to tilt your taco that’s on deck and drain it as much as you can then put it on a napkin to avoid it getting too damp while you are eating your first.
But the juice-factor is a minor issue. Bottom line, the tacos are delicious, and you probably can’t go wrong by choosing any of them.
The only negative was the queso. It was not good. It was not served hot, yet the consistency was very liquid, indicating it contained a large percentage of tomato or water. Even with the blazing hot outside temperature, I wanted warm to hot queso to dip chips into, but this was lukewarm at best and not spicy. We never don’t finish queso, but this one went uneaten. It could have been a bad day, but I would focus instead on the fresh salsas or guacamole, which were all fantastic.