El Taco Mexican Grill
4550 W. Dickman RoadI never like passing up a taco place. That happened a few months ago as I was driving from Battle Creek to Augusta on M-96. I passed a store that had huge banners out front with the word “TACOS” on it. I didn’t have time to stop but I filed it away as a place I needed to stop next time I was in the area.
Late last week, my co-worker and I were on the west side of Battle Creek. We had some time to kill and I remembered that little taco stand. I didn’t even give him a choice. I told him we were going to get tacos and go to get tacos we did.
El Taco Mexican Grill is on Dickman Road (or M-89) just to the southeast of Hill Brady Road in Springfield. The small taco stand is inside Custer Party Store #2.
The convenience store has all the usual staples, but in a corner near the front is an order counter and menu board for Mexican food. They have all the usual staples….tacos, burritos, quesadillas, tamales, tortas, etc.
We were waiting in front of the cash register for the restaurant side of the counter when the lady working the store’s restaurant asked if we wanted food. She said she could take our order and give it to the cook who was in back.
I did my typical order of three steak tacos with just cilantro and an order of chips and salsa. She didn’t ask for payment yet. She said when the order was done, the guy from the restaurant would take payment on his side of the counter. She was just helping him out by taking the order.
It took about five minutes for cook to come out of the back with a plastic of two Styrofoam containers. The cost of the food was right around $9 before tip which I put on my card.
We were still killing time so we decided just to grab one of the tables kind of squeezed into the convenience store by the windows. There isn’t much of a dining room. There’s two tables each with two chairs. It worked fine for us otherwise we would have had to have eaten in the car.
I started in on the tacos which were, of course, delicious. The odd thing I found though is they defaulted to flour tortillas. The lady taking the order didn’t ask me if I wanted flour or corn. My co-worker got corn but he says she asked him. That’s too bad because these were really tasty, but I would have much preferred corn over flour tortillas. There was a lot of steak in each one of them which made for a really filling lunch.
I also got an order of chips and salsa thinking It’d be a handful of chips and a small cup of salsa as a side order. I was wrong. It was a Styrofoam container filled with nacho chips and a large cup of a fresh salsa.
I don’t know if the salsa was home made or not but it definitely had that flavor. Their was a freshness to it that leads me to believe it was. Either way, it was a delicious side to my tacos and more than I could eat in one sitting.
El Taco Mexican Grill is a solid taco stand. Places like this are my favorite places to get tacos. The places that specialize in quick, authentic Mexican food seem to be appearing more and more in the last few years and I, for one, welcome the rise of the taco stand.
SW Michigan Dining 