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Baja Culinary Trip - Street Food (Part 2)

Today I continue with the Baja culinary weekend, once again out of chronological order. On Sunday, the group was treated to an epic street food crawl in Tijuana, led by Bill Esparza and Javier Plascencia of some of their favorite spots.

Since last year's trip I've only dreamed of such a crawl. And what a delightful way to end our trip.


We enjoyed a light breakfast at Plascencia's restaurant, Caesar's. Orange juice, coffee and platters full of authentic sweet breads (not the meaty kind). Great way to prep our palates and tummies for the next couple of stops.

Many of us walked over to the nearby churros stand for another fix (the 3rd time in this trip alone for some of us).


We took the bus uphill to another part of town, the barrio of Tomas Aquino. Bill Esparza covers El Mazateno, this Sinaloan taqueria beautifully in his post.


Very soon upon being seated, they served this divine sopa de camaron (shrimp soup). I'm a sucker for broths that have strong shellfish flavor, but add to that the chiles, herbs, a squeeze of lime and it hits the spot in a beautiful way.


They also graciously brought out platters of mixed seafood ceviche on the house (you can see a couple of the shrimps and avocado on my plate). The dish also contained pulpo, or octopus.

My friend Andi and I shared the fish taco which we dressed with finely shredded cabbage, crema and chile sauces.


This bounty of gorgeous, plump shrimp is half (yes HALF) of the Mazatena, or cameron enchilada (spicy shrimp) taco, one of their signature dishes. Andi and I shared this one too.


Dressed with the same condiments, it becomes even more mouth watering. That house made green sauce comes in a squeeze bottle. It contained avocado, serrano chili and other herby ingredients.


On the last trip we had a couple of smoked marlin tacos, but the tacos de marlin here really rocked! It's one of the few things that I refrain from adding anything extra because it's so masterfully seasoned.


The little bits of corn kernels and other veges liven up the savory fish. And the corn tortillas meld perfectly and mellow out the smokiness.


Somebody from the other end of our long table brought over some tender octopus filling of one of their tacos, which we enjoyed very much.


On the last trip we discussed that if we could have one street food stand or cart back home, it would be the Tortas Wash Mobile cart.

On this trip we stopped at their other brick-and-mortar location bearing the same name.


This near perfect sandwich of juicy beef, tomatoes, pickled red onions and avocado stuffed between perfectly light, crusty bread really is hard to beat.

I took half of it to go and even a couple of hours later, it didn't miss a beat.

The next post covers the culmination of this epic food crawl. Yes, we ate more even after this!