By Jane Ormond
Where 118 High Street, Windsor, 03 9048 0630, tacocat.melbourne
Open Tue-Sun 5pm-9.30pm
Fried tequila shots.Credit: Eddie Jim
Prices $6-$14
Cards AE MC V eftpos
Pho tacos at Tacocat.Credit: Eddie Jim
Go-to dish Pho tacos ($8.50)
Pro-tip It's BYO right now ( corkage $3 a head) but a license is imminent
There's no denying Melbourne loves Mexican food. Mad for it. Taco-loco. Then again, we do love a good Vietnamese pho. And Japanese chicken karaage. You could say we have a bit of a roving eye.
It's as if the good people of Tacocat have acknowledged that, ushering the hungry citizens in with benevolent understanding saying, "It's OK, we understand. Here, have a taco – a Japanese-inspired taco."
Tacocat restaurant in Windsor.Credit: Eddie Jim
Palindromic Tacocat has set up camp under an apartment complex in the studenty patch of High Street in Windsor. It's a breezy cantina with wooden furnishings, a bright red coffee machine, a neon cactus and a sultry Day of the Dead supermodel mural. Owner and travel junkie Craig Dick has taken the Mexican standards but decided, particularly when it comes to tacos, to paint the flavours of favourite destinations over the top. Frankenfood-phobics can relax – these mash-ups really work.
Tacocat isn't licensed right now, so BYO your favourite beers to go with some starter snacks – maybe char-grilled corn, some black bean tostadas piled high with a spicy-sweet combo of beans, jalapenos, avocado and sweet potato, or succulent little chicken taquitos.
Then it's on to the fun stuff – the choose-your-own adventure tacos, made with supersoft, house-made tortillas.
Start trad with Cajun-spiced fish with salsa and slaw, or carnitas with its thick chunk of soft pork under avocado salsa and a tile of crackling for texture. Then you can start stamping your culinary passport in Vietnam – the pho taco is a flavour bomb of beef, bean sprouts, Vietnamese mint and chilli, with a shot glass of anise-fragrant beef broth to drizzle or dip – or Japan, where tender pieces of fried chicken are sprinkled with a tickertape of nori and a good hit of wasabi mayo.
Vegan options include portobello mushroom and corn, or roasted cauliflower and chickpea. For those looking for a bite on the wild side, there are grasshopper tacos – a nutty rubble of the little critters, fried and spiced with garlic and chilli. (Warning: these are not date food, unless you dig watching someone pick teeny-tiny grasshopper legs from between their teeth.)
Desserts prove to be a bit of a rollercoaster. On our visit, the churros are brutally overcooked and merely drizzled in the promised dipping sauce. The tequila shots, however, are another story. Wobbling chunks of sponge cake, drenched in so much tequila you get a Cheech and Chong-style contact high, are fried to a delicate crisp and served in a lime-fringed shot glass with a tingling lemon sorbet acting as the perfect wingman. It's a wild ride you'll want to take again and again.
With so many Mexican eateries out there, it's fun to see the boundaries getting stretched. High on flavour, low on goopy, cheesy Mexicliches, Tacocat will swish your tail.