A week ago I visited Charleston for a couple of days for a work retreat, where we spent the mornings plotting our success in future years.
In the afternoons we enjoyed the scenery, food, and beverages (aka team building). We had some excellent meals and drinks at Edmund’s Oast, Rutledge Cab Company, Husk, FIG, and Leon’s Oyster Shop.
On the way out of town I made a quick visit to Minero, Sean Brock’s relatively new taqueria, with a second outpost set to open in Atlanta in Ponce City Market this summer. While waiting for my taco triplet I realized PCM will have shops/restaurants from four James Beard winners – Anne Quatrano, Linton Hopkins, Hugh Acheson, and Mr. Brock are all represented, though Hugh’s place may not be food based on what I’ve read. Either way, I figure it’s pretty rare to have four winners involved in one development.
Minero is set in a small space on busy East Bay, with a menu primarily focused on tacos, having spent significant time in recipe development for the tortillas – the website says they make their own masa from corn every day. We have access to pretty darn good tortillas here in Atlanta, so I was interested to try them.
Here’s a sampling: from left to right – char-grilled chicken, green chorizo (recipe here), and carnitas. They were clearly put together well, with massive tangy flavors and thought put into texture and garnish. I don’t know I could even pick a favorite, there was something I really really enjoyed about each one. On paper chicken can be a little boring next to the other two interesting fillers, but the char-grill flavor came through big time, and it was cooked just right. Wonderful.
The tortillas – I don’t know what a mind-bending tortilla would taste like, but these coarse textured versions were very good based on my limited experience in tortilla snobbery and quite importantly, they are completely functional with just one layer of tortilla, impressive considering the amount of filling and liquid in each. No one likes a taco blowout.
It was about $10 for all three. I’m pretty stoked for their arrival to ATL because these rocked and were interesting without being weird for the sake of being so.
You can click below for larger photos.
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