Holy Taco
6942 West Q AvenueI was going to take advantage of being home alone for the week and eat out every night. We have so much going on between my daughter’s ice skating and my son starting baseball again that most meals are whatever we can pick up through a drive through or what we can cobble together at home.
I decided to go a little fancier than I did the night before. I was a big fan of the dive bar burger but I had another place in mind I wanted to check out.
Holy Taco is a tequila bar and taqueria in Texas Corners that opened last fall. The small restaurant shares a building and parking lot with the new Fletcher’s Pub near the intersection of Q Avenue and 8th Street in Texas Corners. The building is kind of tucked in to a corner and is a little hard to see at first when you pull in to the parking lot. The blue facade in the middle of a sea of brick and the outdoor patio with string lights hanging overhead mark this taco joint.
The restaurant is not very big. There are maybe a dozen tables inside plus the patio. There’s also a pretty good size bar which is where I chose to sit. There was a guy standing inside the door doing double duty as a busser and a host. He grabbed a menu and set it down in front of me to look at while the bartender was taking care of a couple of other people.
The beer list is a little underwhelming. It’s all cheap American adjunct lagers and a couple of the big Mexican beers. I figured I should probably try one of their signature drinks anyway since that’s more of their thing.
I picked a drink called “The Joshy” margarita. The drink is Blanco Tequila, Triple Sec, prickly pear juice, house sour in a pint glass with a salt rim and garnished with a lime. I’m not much of a tequila drinker but I did enjoy this drink. I think I enjoyed it more because it was served in a pint glass so it was easy to drink.
The Holy Taco menu is very simple. It’s tacos and chips. I started with an order of chips and salsa…and no, it’s not free with your meal. The serving size is actually pretty big and is more of a shareable type of thing but I was eating alone and I didn’t want anything to go to waste. The chips are made in house with tortillas from Hacienda Mexican Foods out of Detroit.
The chips are delicious on their own but they come with three different salsa with three different heat levels. I went for the hot first because..of course I did. There was almost a perfect amount of salsa between the three for all the chips. I had a little bit of the medium one left when I was done. Mostly because green salsa isn’t my favorite.
The tacos are all served a la carte. You can order as many or as few as you want. The price on the menu is for one taco so when you look at that, it can be a little daunting.
I chose to order three tacos. I had asked for a Steak taco, a chorizo taco, and a carnitas taco. The bartender came back and said they just ran out of steak so I changed it to chicken. Before she walked away, I changed my mind again and asked for the Gringo instead but I don’t think she heard me so I ended up with a Chorizo, a carnitas, and a chicken.
I started with the Chorizo taco. All of the tacos, except the Gringo, come on corn tortillas. The chorizo is topped with chihuahua cheese, esquites (a Mexican street corn salad), pickled jalapeno, pickled onion, and cilantro. The jalapenos really gave this taco a little extra kick. The chorizo is a little spicy on it’s own so adding the pepper just upped that heat level.
The second taco I went for was the carnitas. This taco is roasted and shredded pork, a roasted chili and garlic sauce, onion, cilantro, and queso fresco. This taco leaned more on the meat for it’s flavor which is a pretty solid choice. This is probably the simplest taco on the menu but it packs a lot of flavor.
The third taco was the chicken. This one comes with a chipotle chicken, cabbage, esquites (that Mexican street corn salad again), and cilantro. I had eaten quite a bit of the chips and salsa by the time I got to this one so my mouth was already kind of on fire. The chipotle chicken carried a little bit of heat but not sure how much because my the heat receptors on my tongue were already destroyed. Like the other tacos, this one carried a lot of complex, delicious flavors. The thing about Holy Taco is that this is not a typical taqueria.
The bill for my meal was a little over $30 and that’s kind of the reason I haven’t taken J or the kids to this place yet. It’s not a cheap night out but it is a delicious one. You really get a lot of food in each of the tacos. It looks a little deceiving on the plate but when you pick the tortilla up and fold it over, filling starts to come out of each end.
Holy Taco is delicious. It’s a pretty unique Mexican concept in Kalamazoo. It’s owned by the same guys that own Bold and Gusto across the street so you expect a high quality meal. That’s what you get from Holy Taco. It’s an experience. I’d consider it more of a date night type of place than a family meal out but I did see a few families there with younger kids. Don’t let sticker shock get to you. Yes, you can get cheaper tacos in Kalamazoo but these aren’t meant to be cheap tacos. These are meant to be unlike any tacos you can get in the area.
SW Michigan Dining 