Tacos El Gordo

After a couple of days at the resort, we were getting a little stir crazy (although we did make a trip to Wal-Mart to pick up some necessities like sand toys for the kids!) We decided to venture out to dinner before we were sick of the food options in the hotel (personally, I could have eaten at their fruit bar for the rest of my life since it had a never ending supply of papaya). We asked a cab driver where locals eat because we wanted real Mexican food and he suggested Tacos El Gordo:

We requested a driver take us there and when we arrived, it was literally on the side of the highway (and very close to the Wal-Mart we had visited earlier). The taco stand is all outdoors and it was a true family operation; the women made the corn tortillas while the men cut the meat and grilled it and the children prepared the salsa/condiment platters for guests. Here are the women preparing the fresh corn tortillas:

A little boy (around 7-8) brought a tray of different condiments to place on the tacos – we didn’t know the spice level of any of them so we had to taste them all. Some of them were deceptively hot – the green one on the right hand side, for instance, was blazing hot!

The taco stand’s grill was right by the highway – perfect to entice people as they’re heading onto the highway:

The boy brought by some chips so we could dip them into the salsas – the avocado cream helped balance out some of the hotter sauces (although the green one I mentioned before was so hot that nothing really helped when you ate that one!)

Everything is stored outside – the sauces were right next to the grill:

Charley ordered a plain beef taco:

And I ordered a beef taco (front) and a pork taco (back):

And a tripe taco for good measure:

The tacos were probably the best I’ve EVER had – the best anyone had ever had! We were a little nervous when we arrived because it looked a little…run down, but we actually ended up running into the cab driver that recommended the place! He must’ve gotten a craving for it after he told us how good it was.

My favorite was the pork (it was also Ken’s favorite!) and Paul liked the tripe the best (I think he actually had four tacos because he liked them so much!) The meat was very lean, surprisingly, and flavored with lots of fragrant cumin. The sauces were a great touch and the tacos were all really fresh and light. Charley was accidentally served some of the extremely hot green sauce and his lips turned bright red for our group photo:

But he said the tacos were really good and managed to survive after gulping down a large bottle of orange Fanta.

After we got home from our taco adventure, we ordered more chicken tacos from room service and ate some more (with some dessert, too) and couldn’t stop talking about the deliciousness of El Gordo. We wanted to go back before we left Puerto Vallarta but we ended up going to another Dreams resort on the other side of town so we were too far to go back. Next time!