18. Jaco Taco
JACO TACO
21 W State Street, Media and
8 W Gay Street, West Chester
I'm not sure you can call this a taco joint, what with a menu of organic breakfast bagels and acai bowls, green tea and smoothies. But the word "taco" is in the name of this hipster hangout and tacos they do sell.
The best one we had was the North Atlantic Cod, which came spruced up with pineapple salsa, cabbage slaw, roasted poblano crema and tomatillo salsa. Nice piece of fish. We appreciated the corn tortilla, made on site. Too many low-cost places of this ilk use store-bought tortillas, and you can taste the difference.
The Chorizo Taco, with shredded lettuce, caramelized onions, roasted poblano crema and tomatillo salsa, had a flavor exactly like the Ortega taco sauce my mom used to squeeze out of the sealed packed. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Speaking of familiar flavors, the sauce on the Chicken Tinga (stewed tomatoes, sautéed onions, shredded lettuce, cotija cheese and tomatillo salsa) for some reason brought back memories of Campbell's Vegetable Soup.
Finally, we tried the vegetarian Baco Taco (which earned a 'star' on the menu as the restaurant's own favorite). It was billed as seven different items loaded into a corn tortilla, but mostly consisted of a large pile of sweet corn. We searched, and eventually found traces of guacamole and salsa. But we had to search hard.
Hey, you're not going here if you're looking for authentic. And the price is cheap enough that you'll probably come back. If you do, what we'd recommend, over any of the tacos, is the Key Lime Smoothie. That was the highlight of our afternoon.
Score: 74/100
