I had an opportunity to have lunch today at the Calexico Carne Asada cart on Wooster St, and that’s not something that should be taken lightly.
Calexico won the top 2008 Vendy Award with their cart in Soho, and have since expanded with a 2nd Soho cart, two carts in NYC parks, and two restaurants in Brooklyn. Guess good things do come in pairs!
Their daily special was the Gringo Especial, which we got for Today’s Lunch as a taco, along with a pollo asada taco ($3 each). You can get most dishes here as tacos, burritos or quesadillas.
The Gringo Especial is seasoned ground beef that’s topped with salsa verde, crema (sour cream) and pico de gallo, which I declined. The ground beef was well seasoned with cumin and other spices, and the bites with crema had a creaminess (duh!) that worked really well with the seasoned ground beef. It was not greasy either, which can be a problem sometimes with ground beef.
There was a lot of meat in the taco, making it a good thing they used 2 tortillas. Otherwise, there would probably be…tortilla breakage. No worries here.
On to the pollo asada taco.
The pollo asada taco had really nicely grilled chicken, and it came with avocado salsa and pico de gallo, which I declined again. If I had gotten pico de gallo, the photo above would be much more colorful, with some vibrant red from the chopped tomatoes. I’m not a big tomato fan, but many people are.
You can see in the photo how well the chicken was grilled, with some charring just around the edges. Delicious! And with the avocado salsa, this was an awesome taco.
I know their name includes carne asada, and that is excellent too, but Today Lunch of pollo asada and the Gringo Especial was also pretty damn good. I guess you can’t expand this much in 3 years without amazing food!
