A few months ago when we were in North Park, I spied a new place called El Tianguis. It’s a new restaurant whose speciality is taquitos or rolled tacos. El Tianguis is owned by the same people who make the Delimex brand taquitos you can find in the supermarket – but these taquitos are made fresh!
Jake took me here one day after we were out and about and trying to decide where to go for some dinner. Good choice!
Here is El Tianguis’ menu. Besides taquitos, El Tianguis also offers guacamole, rice, beans, aguas frescas, sodas, and beer. That’s it!
The interior of El Tianguis is brightly decorated with a variety of items on the wall along with that bright bubblegum pink wall.
El Tianguis offers 5 flavors of taquitos:
- California (shredded beef, potato, and cheese)
- Beef (in a Mexican sauce)
- Chicken (in a tomatillo sauce)
- Potato (vegan)
- Vegan (lentil and quinoa)
The taquitos are normally served with Mexican sour cream, cheese, lettuce, guacamole, and salsa on the side. You can pick and choose which items you’d like on top. All items are also gluten free.
I personally don’t like lettuce on top and we got the guacamole on the side since Jake isn’t a fan (more for me – yessss). This left our taquitos topped only with Mexican sour cream and a creamy white cheese (which I think might be baby jack plus cotija – it was really good cheese).
We tried the California taquitos and the Potato taquitos and I must say that both were really good. I couldn’t decide which one I liked more!
The potato taquitos were very crispy, hot, and the potato filling inside was creamy and delicious. It was seasoned nicely and I liked how crunchy the taquitos were. The sour cream and cheese on top paired so nicely with the taquitos. I liked that the cheese was creamier and richer in flavor than the normal bright orange cheese you see put on top of taquitos.
The California taquitos were equally as tasty with a mix of the beef and potato. I definitely want to go back and try the other flavors – even the Lentil & Quinoa one – just to compare them all together. You can easily mix and match your flavors as well. Jake and I ordered six taquitos [$7.97] and decided to do half and half for this visit.
To round out our meal we also ordered a side of beans and a side of rice [$3]. The beans were very creamy and flavorful and I quite liked them, which is an unusual thing for me to say. I liked that it was mostly smooth and I enjoyed the bit of cotija on top. The rice was also tasty – fluffy and flavorful with no bits of tomato in it (which I don’t care for).
All in all this was a pretty cheap and yummy meal. I’d definitely come here again for a future taquito craving. My only gripe was that I missed having chips with my meal and it’s one thing that they do not offer at El Tianguis. I wanted some additional chips so I could dip into those beans and guacamole! I guess I just needed to order more taquitos to fix that, but sometimes it’s nice to have another vessel for dipping.
El Tianguis
2810 El Cajon Blvd.
San Diego, California 92104
I’ve been wanting to try this place since my friend Kevin told me about it! The California taquitos sound amazing!!