The person to become Tacolicious’s 1000th Facebook fan will get two tickets to Outside Lands (August 14-15) plus six tacos from our Tacolicious stand! Kings of Leon? Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros?  Tokyo Police Club? Carnitas?

This is going to be one fine day. Go to Facebook now.

Karen Taylor of Primavera's new place in Sonoma

My parents live in Glen Ellen. In the summer,  Sonoma is where I flee from San Francisco’s summer fog. Although this side of the wine country might be more white-bread than the city, it’s hardly lacking in Latin flavor. And Highway 12 is where to find it.

Highway 12, otherwise known as Sonoma Highway, runs through the heart of the town of Sonoma and into Boyes Hot Springs, a part of town where the bodegas (complete with chicken grilling out front) and the fancy Sonoma Mission Inn meet. It’s where you’ll find some great Mexican eating too. Here are some of my picks.

Tortilleria Jalisco 897 W Napa St.
A good flour tortilla is hard to find. More often than not, they’re doughy, pasty things. But the women here make great ones: thin, clearly griddled, no sketchy ingredients, and somehow a layered, lard-texture without the lard. (Not that I’m opposed to lard.) Even before they opened their retail tortilleria, I regularly picked up bags of their tortillas, both flour and corn, to bring home and freeze. The tortilleria also sells tacos and other snacks.

Rancho Viejo, 18976 Highway 12, 707-939-3663
Since it opened in the past year, this cute Yucatecan restaurant has been a welcome addition to Highway 12. Although I haven’t been here yet, the locals (including my parents) enjoy the homecooking, including huaraches, conchinitas pibil and panuchos.

El Molino, 11 Central, phone n/a
Right off 12, this brand-newcomer to Boyes Hot Springs was just opened by Karen Taylor, the owner of the popular Primavera Tamales and the popular Primavera stand at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. I love her down-home but stylish take on Mexican design including gorgeous tiled floors, great lettering and a corrugated green plastic awning. The Blue Bottle coffee sign and a Porshe Cayenne parked outside, is enough to let you know you’re far from Mexico. My chicken enchilada was just fine, but we tried a tamale with a gorgeous, slightly spicy mole and a delicious, if huge, chicken tinga tostada that comes loaded with beans, crema and lettuce. (As I’ve noticed with Tacolicious, people are apt to balk when a Mexican restaurant using high-quality ingredients goes above the average taqueria price range; I’m sure Taylor gets an earful. But her two-for-one portions match the price.) Sit outside and enjoy the warm day.

La Michoacana, 18495 Highway 12, 707-938-1773
Apparently unrelated to the Michoacana paleta brand you’ll see in all the Mission District bodgeas, this ice cream and popsicle shop is the perfect post-lunch stop for both adults and kids. (From what I understand, the family-run business is one of 10 in the U.S.) The ice cream is very good but I’m all about the paletas because they’re just so beautiful, with slices of whole fruit shining through. Drab in comparison, but very tasty, is the walnut flavor. It’s one of my favorites. And how can you forget the frozen bananas dipped in chocolate and coconut? You can’t.

Let’s face the facts: A Mexican restaurant without a good margarita is like a day without sunshine. So when Patricia Unterman, the city’s very respected Examiner restaurant critic, came into Tacolicious and ended what was otherwise a very positive review with this …

“Your biggest investment will be in booze, and here I do have a quibble. Both the house margarita ($9) and the nonalcoholic agua frescas ($4) need work.”

… we were worried.

I emailed Unterman to ask her what exactly she found needed work when it comes to our margarita and she said she wasn’t a fan of the orange liqueur we were using. At Hayes Street Grill, the restaurant she co-owns, she uses Gran Torres Orange Liqueur and said that it’s the best, if a bit expensive, option.

Not surprisingly, our margarita is our best-selling drink meaning this critique wasn’t something to take lightly. So we set out to do a blind taste test or nine margaritas made identically—except each with a different orange liqueur (barring one that was made with agave syrup instead, Tommy’s style). We couldn’t find Grand Torres in time for the taste test unfortunately, but our selection of orange liqueurs was broad, including:

• Patron Citronge
• Combier
• Grand Marnier
• Hiram Walker
• Clement Creole Shrubb
• Bols
• Curacao Curacao
• Agave nectar (not an orange liqueur but we wanted to try it out as an option)
• Cointreau

The winning margarita would be our new recipe!

I invited a smattering of tasters of all sorts of expertise: Liza Shaw, chef of A16 (and our neighbor); Eric Rubin (co-owner of Tres Agaves tequila) and Rebecca Chapa (somm  and wine and spirits educator). Also tasting: me, Joe and Telmo, our chef.

As we sipped and pondered deep thoughts, discussions about whether or not you should make a cocktail so that it dilutes properly with ice came up. Or whether or not a margarita should let the tequila speak first. My big aha was that margaritas are so ingrained in our taste memories (they epitomize the taste of good times, beaches, warm weather) that they’re really difficult to taste completely objectively.

To be absolutely honest, as the tasting wore on, I started to realize that the differences were incredibly subtle, barring a couple that seemed markedly different. But I kept this to myself, should I come across like a fraud. Luckily Liza said it for me, “This is harder than it looks!”

My notes for each margarita were one-worders: (“good”, “boozy”) while Liza, sitting next to me, was writing madly, eloquent descriptions like: “Slightly floral, slightly bitter, nice balance of sweetness and acid, not very pronounced orange flavor.” So much for my food writing career.

Nevertheless, there was one I loved and kept returning to taste again. There was also one that truly sucked. The rest? I could have almost swapped one for another. The thing with tastings is all your focus is on the drink or the food, whereas in everyday life, you’re far more distracted. If I’d been chatting with friends about my day and eating dinner while drinking these margaritas, their slightly different flavor profiles would have been a non-issue. (Not to mention I probably would have been drunk.)

But this was in the name of sobering science. Finally, we got to the last one. We numbered them in order: one being the best, nine being the worst. Then Rebecca tallied them up. One orange liqueur came out clearly on top. In fact three of us (Liza, Rebecca and myself) had voted it our top pick.

As the bartender went through each different liqueur, we waited with bated breath to see which one we’d chosen as the outstanding winner. Drum roll: It was Bols Triple Sec! The thrifty choice of orange liqueur we’ve been using at Tacolicious all along. I actually couldn’t believe it. I was stunned. Liza’s notes for Bols said: “Sweeter orange blossom flavor. Not so acidic. Nice balance.” Mine said “Might be my fav.”

Ironically enough, Telmo and Joe had choice “E” (the Bols) margarita as one of their least favorites.

Conclusion? We’re back to our original marg. And you can’t judge an orange liqueur by its price.

Epilogue: Patricia Unterman will be pleased to know that on top of our house margarita, we’re also going to start serving a margarita made with nothing but tequila, lime juice and agave syrup—which is Eric Rubin’s favorite way to make a margarita. Let the agave shine through.

Emma: Proof that even brides can get with our "fingers not forks" motto

In May, a tale of love and tacos unfolded. In other words, our first full-on, 180 person wedding gig.

Emma Boyes (now, Emma Campion)—the associate creative director of food and drink at Weldon Owen Publishing in San Francisco (think  Williams Sonoma cookbooks and more) hired us for her wedding to Pat Campion, a property developer. I was particularly nervous about this because I knew that Emma was connected in the food industry and the wedding would be populated with food stylists, photographers and more. I mentioned this perhaps more times than Kelly, who organized the whole thing, would have liked.

But all went off without a hitch. Except for the hitch itself, if you know what I mean. I interviewed Emma briefly to see how it went. She also sent us some of the beautiful photos shot by Melanie Duerkopp.

A taco wedding? Great idea, but not traditional.
Being in the food business, I have learnt the difference between fancy food and good food. We wanted it to be casual, fun, the food simple but delicious, with plenty of chilled wine and buckets of icy, cold Tecates. All this without breaking the bank or getting sucked into the “wedding industry.” Honestly, after meeting with a couple of wedding caterers, we were so disillusioned about the whole affair, their food was so fussy—it just wasn’t for us.

And why Tacolicious (barring the obvious, awesome reasons)?
We enjoy  the street food in San Francisco—everything the Ferry Building on Thursdays has to offer; tacos on Harrison; Naomi’s pizza oven outside of Homestead. But finding the right street vendor proved hard, considering we were feeding 180 and wanting some sort of passed food as well as the main meal.

How did the reception go?
We kicked off the afternoon with Prosecco, beer and passed appetizers. The Tacolicious tuna tostadas have been raved about ever since, as well as the delicious gazpacho shooters you guys made. The sit-down was as family style as you can get for 180 people: long tables, salsa chips, limes and guacamole along all tables. I had no problem tucking into at least four tacos, white dress and all. There was no way I was going to miss out. Carnitas is my favorite, but they are all pretty damn good.

Champagne is overrated.

Inspirational taco memories?
My favorite taco memory is of a girl surf trip I took to Saladita. We would get up and surf from dawn, then come back and crack a beer and cook up some breakfast tacos, then sleep in the hammocks until we would do it all over again.

Tips for nervous brides?
Don’t let the wedding industry suck you in. Go with your own instincts of what works for you and your partner and remember that your friends and family are there to celebrate with you. So if you want tacos, paper plates and biodegradable forks, go for it and feel good about it.

Emma + Pat = Tacos

El Moro's churros con chocolate (photo by Tyler Gourley)

Everyone knows that a properly-made churro is a thing of beauty: The way I see it, it’s all about ratio. It has to be mostly crispy on the outside (the ribbed, stick shape is the perfect vehicle for this), a little bit creamy on the inside, overall a tad chewy, hot (but not tongue-burning) and dusted with just enough crunchy sugar and cinnamon to hit the mark somewhere between pleasurably sweet and wincingly so.

I’m also very aware of how bad a cold churro can be: A leaden, chewy guilt-trip. If you’re going to indulge, it better be good.

I’m excited to report that Telmo has been working hard on our churros recipe. In fact, just a couple weeks ago we invested in a new fryer, specifically to be used only to make churros. (Put it this way: Churros fried in the same oil that we use for our fish=gross).

Churros are made with what is essentially a pate à choux—the same dough used to make everything from eclairs to crullers to beignets—and pressed directly into hot oil through a pastry bag with a star tip. Telmo’s most recent inspiration has been the churros from the famous Churrería El Moro in Mexico City where they make some pretty great specimens. I think they’re made even greater by the fact that the servers, who are by no means particularly young, wear old-school, maid-like outfits, complete with white aprons, which would be weird at Tacolicious but really add to the whole flavor when you’re at a 75-year-old restaurant in DF.

Tacolicious's churros con chocolate (photo by me)

Our churros hit the right marks: They’re chewy, crispy, creamy, just the right amount sugary. Truth be told, I prefer them with cafe con leche, but we’re serving them traditionally with a rich, thick hot chocolate that turns them from just delicious into decadent. Come and get them while they’re hot.