We were invited to the soft opening of the new Tacomio location in North Vancouver (1300 Lonsdale Ave, North Vancouver, BC). We love our Mexican food but we find there’s not a lot of great locations for the authentic stuff locally. So when we got the invite, we zoomed right over to their new restaurant to give them a go!
TACOMIO
This location is held in a bright, airy space. You go up to the counter to order when you arrive and they’ll quickly assemble your order for you. All their fillings are displayed behind a glass counter so you see exactly what you’re ordering. We liked the transparency of how our food was being served to us. After paying, you can choose from the numerous amounts of counter seats available at the restaurant. We could envision a lot of lunchtime visitors stopping in for a casual bite.
THE FOOD
While we waited, the executive chef brought over some corn chips and guacamole for us. The corn chips were delightfully seasoned. They came in long, thin strips which are perfect for dunking into the guac. The guacamole itself was chunky with lots of onions and cilantro. There was also a hunt of lime flavor to it which helped bring out the flavor of the avocado. We would love to find a recipe for this to make at home!
Go big or go home, right? We know it looks like a mess right here but let’s be honest here: you don’t eat tacos to look dainty. They stuffed the tacos with such much filling the shells could barely hold it all. We ordered four meat tacos and two vegetarian ones. They offered a Beyond Meat option which we tried. This was the most disappointing taco to us because the texture of the “meat” was too hard. Their other vegetarian option (Chiles Asados – guac, roasted bell peppers, garbanzo beans and corn) was absolutely delicious. All the flavor profiles for the meat tacos were perfect but the meat to be slightly dry. We chalked it up to soft opening hiccups and are still willing to give it another try.
We also ordered a beef burrito (angus beef in Guajillo) sauce. Pro tip: go and add the sour cream to this burrito. It’ll add that special oomph to your burrito. If you decide not skip it, that’s OK. These burritos were hefty. They did not skimp at all on the meat, rice and beans for these bad boys. Not only did the filling pack a punch, the flavors all came out when we bit into them. After our chips and tacos, we were only able to share half a burrito between us. If you have leftovers, no worries as the staff will kindly give you a box or help you rewrap your food.
OVERALL
We were so glad that this location opened in North Vancouver! There isn’t enough authentic Mexican food in this city and we need more places like Tacomio. One thing we wanted to try that wasn’t on the menu was al pastor. The chef said he’s working on it – it’s unavailable at this location at the moment but he’ll be bringing fresh items to the menu constantly. We are looking forward to see what else Tacomio does in the future and will be back.
