Texans feel fiercely about Very Texan Truths. Your granny, your mail carrier and your 2 year-old harbor impenetrable opinions, formed hard as concrete and half as brittle, and they'll be praying for you until you come around on certain hotly debated topics:
Love-hating and/or hate-loving the Dallas Cowboys; that Big Tex, while creepy, is better than Santa Claus; and whether or not another Texas summer is worth enduring are big ones. Such Very Texan Truths cannot be satisfactorily resolved with a mere "agree to disagree."
Add breakfast tacos to that list.
Last week, we created an informal poll asking our readers to choose which restaurant or shop in Dallas-Fort Worth serves the best breakfast tacos from a ballot featuring more than 30 options. We knew it might get rowdy.
In the end, R Taco -- the Dallas-born chain formerly known as Rusty Taco -- ran away with the title, garnering nearly 30 percent of the overall vote. Runners-up Torchy's Tacos, Tacodeli and Rudy's Country Store and Bar-B-Q took spots two through four. Pretty straightforward.
But, a wildcard factor rounded out the top 5: write-in candidates. It comes as little surprise. Our readers know local Tex-Mex menus like the backs of their hands, and they're known for having, shall we say, an independent streak you'd expect from folks in the Lone Star State.
Many of the write-ins were disqualified because they reflected names already on the ballot, shops that have closed down permanently or places that have great tacos ... just not desayuno -specific ones. Once those were removed, a solid list of fan favorites emerged. In order of most write-in votes:
Top 10 Write-In Votes:
- Meat U Anywhere
- Rosa's Cafe
- Tejano BBQ and More Taqueria
- Tipico's
- Tia Dora's Bakery
- Pappa's Bar-B-Q
- Amelia's
- Taqueria El Si Hay
- Crush Taco
- Alamo Drafthouse
Top 5 Burrito Bandits, etc.
From the beginning, we specified that our ballot would not include restaurants that served breakfast burritos in lieu of tacos. What's the difference? Burritos are bigger, more fully stuffed and usually wrapped with a thicker flour tortilla instead of corn (though not always). It's not an exact science.
If that seems like nitpicking, well -- simply put, we had to contain the massive ballot somehow. That, of course, did not keep readers from trying to sneak in these beauts.
- Whataburger's Taquito (Burrito? Taco? Who knows. This version isn't deep-fried like a traditional taquito, but that's A-OK with us.)
- El Jordan Cafe
- Gonzalez Restaurant
- El Grande Burrito (This place in Allen serves breakfast tacos, also, but it would be hard to order lighter fare over its hefty namesake.)
Editor's note: Local food critic Brian Reinhart tweeted to us that he believes an entry on our ballot, El Puesto, has closed (and that his write-in vote went to Tia Dora's -- thanks, Brian!). We put in a call to El Puesto's listed number, which was disconnected, and confirmed that its inclusion did not skew results. We regret the error.