Urban Taco, the bright and cheerfully contemporary restaurant at The Quarry Village that is the Dallas chain’s only away-from-home outlet, bustles at noon with English and Spanish speakers alike. The place comes across as more hip Mexico City than conservative Big D, and the menu follows suit with guacamoles Reforma and Polanca and carnitas DF.
Unless you ask for other wrappings — even lettuce, tacos are of the street-food, corn-tortilla kind and are nothing if not inventive. Dos Equis “barbacoa” may stray from the traditional definition of the term, but the beer braising of the beef does add intensity. Sounding luxuriously 21st century, the ahi tuna tacos are distinguished largely by their generosity: Both the chile-crusted tuna and its avocado crema could use more flavor. But there was sabor to burn in the equally inventive roasted potato and zucchini taco with its dressing of guajillo piquin salsa—just one of the dozen or so sauces that are also available as a trio with chips. (The house chips are not your normal ones, either; think yucca, fried flour tortilla…)
Urban Taco does like to push the notion of trios: ceviches (stick to the simpler ones); guacamoles (the Reforma needed a little more of its lusty dressing, some extra salt and lime—and a little mashing on the part of the diner, but was otherwise fresh and appealing); the tacos … There’s also a lunch special of two tacos with good poblano green rice and blendy black beans, but as the servings of the sides are tiny, we say don’t go there.
We also say that should you be feeling frisky enough to have a michelada, the roja version is plenty punchy (we picked Pacifico beer as the base for the spicy lime, tomato, and chile-blend seasonings), and one of these would suffice. UT also has a fine selection of tequilas, including infusions listed on a chalkboard. The Oaxaca Old Fashioned, with tequila, mezcal and mole bitters, is tempting, too —just not at lunch. We have never made it as far as any of the more substantial platillos here (they include a version of that chile-crusted tuna and red snapper Acapulco in a garlic mojo); maybe that Old Fashioned would encourage us to do so at dinnertime.
