Where: Taqueria El Gallo, 16720 Redmond Way #1, Redmond

Fast, cheap and good—pick three at Taqueria El Gallo

Some would argue that the storefront culture of the suburbs guarantees its sterility. These people haven’t looked closely, listened attentively, or tasted carefully.

Remember what you had for lunch yesterday?  Was it a hamburger so good it made you forget that last rotten burger joint?  Was it a dish so delicate it satisfied the slithery back of your reptile brain?

If you said "no", you may have been eating in a restaurant with little or no vision of what a restaurant should be.

Fortunately, a visionary restaurant is easy to spot. You've enjoyed one if you've said, "That’s the best lunch I’ve had in a long time!"   The judges would have also accepted an exaggerated belch and no fewer than five yummy noises.

Do restaurants like that really exist on the Eastside?

¡Bien noticias amigas y amigos!  In and around the same strip malls as some of the worst food foisted upon mankind since the Israelites ate manna, great restaurants are becoming less few and not as far between.

One of the absolute best in the quick-lunch category has been around for about a year and its fame is spreading.

Along Redmond Way, just West of the now-defunct Boston Market (née Chicken, now Sleep Country USA), is Taqueria El Gallo. The name, loosely translated, means Rooster’s Tacos. And you’ll have to get up pretty early in the morning to find a better taco in the entire state of Washington.

Taqueria, of course, means taco stand, and some of the best are just that—not much more than a scalding hot surface and a place to keep fresh ingredients. These eateries trade a low comparative start-up investment for a big risk—the long shot chance that their food alone will be good enough to sustain them through the five risky years it takes a small business to establish itself financially.   For El Gallo, the gamble must have been a sure thing.

The place is clean and well-lit, but don’t go for the atmosphere.  There isn't much atmosphere.  Cheap cervezas help wash down hot peppers, but don’t sweat the beer list.  Just pick food and drink that sounds good and muy gusto!  This may not be the Mexican food you’re used to.  This is muy authentico Mexican food of a kind that, despite the popularization of kitschy, fresh-ingredient Mexican-style eateries, can be found nowhere else in the Seattle area.

A single dish goes to demonstrate this point most effectively: tacos al pastor. Composed of marinated pork  traditionally served in a corn shell with only chopped onions and fresh cilantro; tacos al pastor can be found at but a handful of Mexican restaurants in the Puget Sound. Taqueria El Gallo does it right—grilling the pork until its salty marinated flavor comes to the crispy surface of the meat and transforms it from bland to bodacious—a little sour cream (a topping that you’ll have to request) and salsa verde, and get acquainted with tacos as they should be done.

Pay a single visit to the place, and see how ridiculous it seems that you ever tried to appreciate the difference between Taco Time and Taco Bell. Taqueria El Gallo is Mexican fast food that redeems the Eastside strip mall.  

By E. Kevin Dare - Guest local writer and lover of authentic foods.