Restaurant Review: El Conde de le Lunacharquis (Tacos de Canasta on the Street Outside Sam's Club)

Our favorite tacos de canasta in town.

Our first two or three months in Oaxaca were spent exploring the Valles Centrales and getting to know the area’s patios, gardens, stone-paved streets and avenues, and, of course, restaurants. But we had visited the city’s most famed (and expensive) restaurants when we were still tourists, and now that we were locals we wanted a more intimate food experience, something more common than what’s offered at more lauded establishments. Those experiences aren’t hard to find here, as practically every street in Oaxaca has, if not a small and informal restaurant, at least a person selling something tasty and homemade on a pop-up card table. But what scratched our itch in those first days was El Conde de le Lunacharquis, a taco stand set up on the outer edge of the cracked and broken stretch of road outside of the Sam’s Club parking lot in Gringolandia.

While it’s tempting to call the stand a taquería, it’s more accurate to describe it as a puesto, a stall. No cooking happens there, with food being delivered throughout the day by motorbike to the friendly and constantly working ladies on the service side of a set of two or three tables laden with huge wicker baskets filled with tacos. All day long, they sling tacos to a huge number of hungry customers brought to the area by American-style big box shopping, but unenthused by Sam’s Club’s mediocre and surprisingly expensive food court offerings. Those customers crowd under the tent that shields the puesto from the sun, sitting on the type of low plastic stools Anthony Bourdain was known to adore, or even just standing if no seats are available, as often they aren’t.

Taquerías and puestos selling tacos are a dime a dozen in Oaxaca, but tacos de canasta are far less common. Here, the most popular options, by far, are either tacos al pastor, pork carnitas, or, most commonly on the weekends, barbacoa. Tacos de canasta are more commonly popular in central Mexico, and especially in Mexico City. And while Oaxaca is famed for its food, it would be made even better if this particular type of taco were more widely available.

Tacos de canasta translates to “basket tacos,” and they’re one of the simpler versions of the taco art form—a single tortilla smeared with an almost scandalously meager amount of filling, which is then folded over into a half moon, as quesadillas are, and smothered in either oil or butter. As the flimsy tacos are assembled, they’re packed tightly into a basket lined with a large plastic bag (hence the name) or, sometimes, even just a bucket. Tacos de canasta are inexpensive, quick, and because they’re literally encased in a protective layer of fat, they stay sensuously delicious long after they’re made, as long as they’re kept warm. They’re also inexpensive; at El Conde de Lunacharquis, they cost between 8 to 11 pesos each, approximately .50 to .60 cents. Three of them make for a snack, five for a good meal, but eating seven isn’t out of the question if you’re looking to indulge yourself.

The menu of El Conde, from the day we placed our big order.

El Conde de le Lunacharquis has a lot going for it beyond simply being a better, cheaper option than the industrial food court nonsense being plopped on a tray at Sam’s Club. With your tacos comes access to a rather robust salsa bar with at least three or four types of salsa, as well as pickled jalapeños and cauliflower, and onions pickled with red wine vinegar. The service is fast and friendly, and a liter of either ice-cold agua de jamaica or horchata will set you back another dollar or so.

The tacos are, of course, the real draw. The most popular by far is the suadero de res, a cut of beef that’s similar to flank steak and is the “twitch” muscle responsible for that shaking muscular movement a cow manifests that helps it shake off flies. The beef is braised to a succulent tenderness and is deeply flavorful, lending itself well to being encased in a tortilla and then bathed in liquid fat contained in the canasta. But the tacos at El Conde are, in general, fabulous, a procession of taquería classics and hits. Sevel of their best tacos feature potatoes, a classic taco filling that, in my experience, is often overlooked in the eastern United States, and their rendition of papas con rajas, tender chunks of boiled potato with strips of roasted poblano peppers, will have you pulling out your wallet and counting your change to see how many more you can afford to buy.

Also eminently worth trying is the chicharron prensado, a taco made from an extremely traditional type of pork product, which itself is composed of the little bits of fried pork and rind leftover at the bottom of a pot of chicharron. Those delicious bits are collected, packed into a mold, and compressed, both to solidify them and to squeeze out any excess oil from the cauldron of lard chicharrones are fried in. That fried pork cake is then used to make tacos, and the ones sold by El Conde are particularly rich and succulent.

Writing this review, it’s clear my narrative is incomplete. While we’ve eaten every taco on the menu several times over, I don’t know the names of the owners or what their individual stories are. I’m not sure how long the stand has been open for, or why they’ve chosen to sell tacos de canasta. But, I can say that I’ve been to where their kitchen is located, which I imagine very few of their other customers can claim.

Last year, on the occasion of my family visiting for my mom’s birthday, we ordered a large catering order from El Conde, and due to bad weather, we received an apologetic text telling us our order was going to be significantly late. Already in the area, we offered to swing by to pick up the tacos in lieu of having them delivered and discovered that the address we were given was actually an apartment located in a somewhat modern condo development. Not too long after we parked, a man walked out with our order of approximately 150+ tacos, and we had an opportunity to view the arrival and departure of the mopeds that bring that kitchen’s tacos to the puesto we had come to love and rely on.

I don’t know if I can quite claim that the tacos from El Conde de le Lunacharquis are worth making a special trip to Gringolandia for. There’s really nothing else of note in that area, other than the aforementioned shops and a variety of car dealerships, and it’s certainly not within walking distance from anywhere any typical tourist would stay or want to go. Oaxaca has other excellent taquerías that are far easier and more convenient to get to. But if you have a car and plan to go to the airport, or perhaps are heading south to villages like San Martín Tilcajete, famed for its alebrijes, or San Bartolo Coyotepec, the home of the region’s black pottery, barro negro, El Conde would certainly be a convenient and worthwhile stop to make.

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Tigre, who climbed into Leo’s car seat instead of being left behind when we went out.