Tacos El Cunado – Bridge Street
1024 Bridge Street NWIt’s been a while since the co-worker I always get tacos with brought the idea up. This past Wednesday was the first time in several weeks he tracked me down to see if I wanted to make a taco run. Unfortunately, our usual place is closed on Wednesday’s so that option was out.
We were both bummed, but now I was thinking tacos. There are several authentic taco places in Grand Rapids that I haven’t tried yet, so I started looking for a back up plan.
My first instinct was to do a Google search for Tacos El Cunado. There are multiple locations around the city and I’ve eaten at the Downtown Market location and enjoyed it, so I figured we’d be ok with trying a new taco place just this once.
For no particular reason, the location I chose was the Tacos El Cunado on Bridge Street. The small shop sits on the corner of Bridge Street and Pine Avenue on Grand Rapids’ west side.
With the unreal amount of snow we got this week, parking was a little tricky. The carry-out only restaurant has enough parking spaces for just a couple cars in front of the building, but with snow piles, that was severely reduced. I was about to park across the street, but I didn’t really feel I could get off the road safely on Bridge Street, so I ended up doing a loop around and parking on the Pine Avenue side of the building.
The inside of the restaurant is tiny. When I opened the door, there were three people already waiting in the small waiting room and that was bout the max. Luckily, one of the patrons was leaving as he was being handed a bag of food as I was walking in, so I waited outside until he exited then made my way to the order counter.
While we were checking out a new place, neither of us strayed from our typical order. I got five steak tacos with just cilantro and C.W. got four chorizo tacos with both cilantro and onion. The cost was a hair over $18 as the tacos are two bucks a pieces.
It really only took a few minutes for the lone cook to warm up the tortillas and fill them with the meat of our choices. Not long after taking a seat on the well warn chairs in the small waiting area, I was being handed a bag with foil wrapped deliciousness.
When I make it back to the shop, I had to unwrap all of the foil packets to see what was what. I dropped off C.W.’s tacos and a cup of hot sauce then headed off to grab a drink and find a place to enjoy my tacos.
At first glance, the tacos look on the small side, but that’s because there is so much meat in each one. All nine of our tacos were just overflowing with meat.
We pretty much came to the same consensus after a few bites in to our tacos. They were delicious, but they just didn’t stack up to Taqueria San Jose which is the same opinion I had of the Downtown Market Tacos El Cunado.
That said, our meals were still very delicious. The steak was tender and well seasoned and as I already mentioned, it was plentiful. The double layer of tortilla tried it’s hardest to soak up all of the juice from the meat, but it was a loosing battle as they were just too juicy. The hot sauce was really the only disappointment to the meal for me. It wasn’t quite as spicy as I was hoping and it really just kind of got lost in the flavor of the meat.
C.W. said his chorizo tacos were very tasty. We’re so used to our usual taco place, that everything is compared to that. He said that the chorizo, while tasting homemade, was made with a spice mix that he wasn’t used to. His verdict was that the tacos were delicious and he would eat there again…especially considering this is not too far from his house
I’m so jealous of all the great authentic taco places that have set up shop in Grand Rapids. Tacos El Cunado is another great, neighborhood taqueria. It’s not going to replace our usual haunt, but that’s ok. Options are good and this place is an option on the West Side.
Asado Tacos w/Cilantro
SW Michigan Dining 