Well, as I've written so many times in this blog, my plans don't always work out. Case in point is today's review, I went into Oxnard with the intention of eating some tacos at Tacos La Costa on Saviers Road but alas, it was closed. If you haven't noticed by now I'm not really familiar with the business hours of many of the taquerias around Oxnard. But luckily for me, there's plenty to choose from.
It always seems weird to me when 2 or 3 taquerias are right next door to each other, which is the case with Tacos La Costa and La Cocina Rica, the latter being were I'm doing today's review.
The sign outside read that they serve tacos for 75 cents apiece but when I ordered my tacos at the counter inside I was charged a dollar for each one. Its really no big deal since either way its totally cheap and reasonable for a taco. But I do wonder why they charged me more?
On the plus side they had the easiest menu to read and understand that I've seen yet. Anyhow- Ordered 4 tacos: carnitas, carne asada, al pastor and chicharoness.
Starting with the chicharoness: If you don't already know, I'm a huge fan of chicharoness. As a kid, my uncle Ramon would make some awesome tacos out of chicharoness and ever since then I've been hooked. Yeah, well, so far all of the chicharoness tacos I've tried for this blog have just plain sucked. This one was average; there was some crispness to them but no pork flavor. Really, its almost as if they took a bag of pork rinds and just chopped them up and dumped them in to a tortilla.
The al pastor was very tender with a moist and soft texture. This would have been awesome if the pork had any flavor whatsoever, which it did not. The only thing I could taste was the overwhelming flavor of corn from the grainy yellow corn tortillas. They weren't bad, I mean they were hot and lightly oiled (which is always a plus) but it was all I could taste.
Carne asada same thing. The meat was extremely tender and chopped into tny bits but just no flavor.
Carnitas were shredded and a little moist but mostly dry. Comparatively, the carnitas packed more flavor than the other tacos. But, if this is the stand out of the group then there's some serious problems here.
All the tacos came topped with a salsa roja which was very good. Smokey flavor with a very slow building and long lasting burn that I just wanted to dip some chips into. Again, the tortillas had a rustic flavor (no way they were handmade) and were good but unfortunately had no other notes to play off of and just dominated the flavor of all of the tacos.
Yeah, so I wasn't totally pleased with today's food. At 75 cents a pop ( or a dollar, or whatever...) these tacos may be worth your time. I don't think I'll be back........I just wish Tacos La Costa was open........son of a bitch... 2/5 Stars
La Cocina Rica #2
4202 Saviers Road
Oxnard, CA 93033
