Little Neon Taco (First Hill)
Very Seattle inside and very good tacos also inside
The TL;DR: Go. If you’re feeling tacos and don’t want garbage pay a little more and get something delicious and high quality. Maybe wash it down with some horchata, agua fresca, or a marg. They seem to have a banging happy hour lineup as well as agave flights so if this is a post work or PM spot to you I’d recommend stopping by regularly to check the tequila supply.
The Wordy Analysis
I drive past this place every day on the way to work always questioning if I should figure out how to stop in. It’s too far from the office but also in a hood, more like a district, so close to downtown Seattle I have no reason to go there otherwise. Recently however, Seattle has been on lockdown from the coronavirus and during a routine -and unrelated to the virus- stop at the giant hospital complex a block away I decided to grab lunch here on my way out.
“Everything is in a name.”
Is it? I kinda passed this place up also because the name scared me. Not that it’s a bad name -I assume something personal to the owner or some reference. But given the demographics of Seattle I assumed the worst.
Naturally upon further review at the prospect of heading there for lunch post-hospital visit I find, predictably, I’m a douche and should have gone to their website and learned their owner, a Mexican, which immediately brought credit and optimism to lunch.
Walking in to the restaurant it’s dead. It’s 11:30am and the fears of contracting coronavirus are in full effect so it’s understandable we’re the only ones here and only the sixth ticket of the day. It’s also very white. White walls, white tables, white trim, but that makes it very bright which is nice on a rainy day. My first, and kind of only complaint in my visit is now. After walking in the staff who were still setting up chairs outside let us know to grab a menu and order over by the counter. It’s kind of a weird setup- walk over toward the back of the restaurant in what would normally be a tight space to stand in line and place an order. There’s no overhead menu so you also need to grab a printed one and be ready by the time you’re up. I’ve seen this setup be annoying and inefficient at other places and from what the experts say on Yelp some have issue with this when it’s busy. Whatever.
There’s an interesting list of tacos, a few tortas, and a handful of appetizers. I go for the chicken mole taco, the picadillo taco, my spouse the carnitas taco and chorizo taco, and we both split an order of chicharrón as well as queso with chips. I’ve noticed a lot of Mexican places in Seattle doing a queso fundido type dish frequently in the appetizers and actually didn’t read enough to realize this was just a nacho cheese dip with chips. Happily, as you’ll see.
Service is quick and on point. We grabbed a seat at the window partly in some civic duty to encourage anyone passing by also interested in lunch that other people existed during the outbreak. Horchata to drink, freshly made chicharróns, and a soup cup of cheese dip with a flying saucer of deliciously spicy red salsa. Also a bowl of way more chips than available dip.
The chicharróns were great -still crackling in the basket as they came out. The queso and dip, not queso fundido, was great. It tasted just close enough to that loveable trash nacho cheese dip but, slightly less fat and not regrettable, that it seemed homemade. To top it off it came with a small dish of really fantastic thick red salsa which not only doubled as salsa for the chips but when blended with the queso made everything amazing.
Shortly after finishing the apps our taco plates came out. Small and expensive tacos I thought but then again rent isn’t free and neither are the people working. Fortunately the flavor hit a home run multiple times and expensive or not this was going to be a good lunch.
I started with the chicken mole and if that immediately strikes you as something you wouldn’t order I’d generally agree. Mole, as most know, can be many many different forms not only literally the kind of mole but whether it came from a can, jar, or a stockpot. Even if you have someone’s grandma from Oaxaca making the mole in the next room it doesn’t mean you’ll like it so ordering something in mole from a place you’ve never been in a taco (when there’s more benchmark options like carnitas) all crossed my mind.
I took the first bite and immediately thought CHOCOLATE. I get chocolate’s part in mole but I’m just not a fan and that first reaction didn’t seem great but then it got… kind of amazing. This wasn’t a can and wasn’t a jar and definitely was from a stockpot and if they said it was the owner’s grandma’s recipe I’d believe it. The first bite turned into a staircase of flavors it’s hard to describe. It was great and so was the chicken, if you even remember there’s chicken.
Next up the picadillo taco. Recently I’ve started to really like picadillo- it’s interesting because it’s not that popular in LA but is prevalent in Seattle most likely due to the CDMX origins of a lot of spots here and it seems to be a mostly CDMX originated dish. Culinary history aside I think it reminds me a lot of a sort of shepherd’s pie type thing varying across meat, potatoes, and vegetables. This taco was my second favorite of the two but I did like in particular the blue corn hard shell tortilla it came in.
During the meal I also snagged a bite of the chorizo taco from the spouse and it too was good -not overly greasy as it can be, with a lot of good flavor. They also had the carnitas taco which I almost got and it was quoted as being good but dry. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you live around here or work around here check it out.
