We didn’t eat out in the Twin Cities this past weekend because we weren’t in the Twin Cities this past weekend. If you pay attention to my posts on Instagram you’ll know that we were in New York and New Jersey for a few days. We ate out more than a couple of times on that trip and reports on those meals will start showing up on the blog once I get done with my remaining reports from our summer’s travels in Japan, South Korea and India. Today, however, I do have a Twin Cities report for you, as per usual. That’s because I had a report in my back pocket from August and September. We had lunch together as a family at La Hacienda back in August between errands in Minneapolis; and then a few weeks later I went back by myself on the way back from an outing to get some knives sharpened (at Eversharp Knives). Here is a quick look at both meals together.

As per their website, Taqueria La Hacienda was one of the first food vendors at the Mercado Central back in 1999. They later opened standalone stores in Richfield, Minneapolis and Burnsville. Both the meals I’m reporting on were eaten at the Minneapolis location on Lake St., not too far away from Mercado Central. This location is a bit of a taco paradise as their immediate neighbour is a location of Pineda Tacos and the vendors at Plaza Mexico are also just a few steps away (by the by, I realize that I’ve never reported on Pineda—need to fix that at some point). It’s a large, bright restaurant, and was not close to being full at lunch on either of the two visits; though there was a steady stream of customers either sitting down for a quick meal or picking it up to go.

The menu is not small but it’s not overly expansive either. The menu is organized around the three poles of tacos, burritos and tortas. There are a few other things as well: you can get quesadillas, for instance (choosing between the proteins that go on/in the others) but they don’t have gorditas or sopes and so forth. On the weekends they do have menudo and pozole. And, of course, they have quesabirria and and also a few more incarnations of birria: as a burger and as ramen. On our first visit we stuck essentially to the taco end of things.

The younger boy got an order of their Quesabirria, which gives you three tacos, a small bowl of consome to dip them in and some salsa. He ate two of the tacos and the missus and I finished the third. We all thought it was pretty good. The older boy got an order of the Alambre Hawaiano, which features al pastor, pineapple, bacon, ham, cheese etc. over corn tortillas. As he is an enthusiast of al pastor, pineapple and bacon, he was well pleased and I liked my bite of it too. The missus and I each got three regular tacos. Hers were with carnitas, lengua/tongue and buche/pork stomach; and I got tripa/intestines, suadero/flank steak, and a lengua as well. All were good; the lengua and the tripa were the pick of the lot, in my opinion. We also enjoyed the salsa on offer—the orange one that came with the quesabirria as well as the red and green that came with the other dishes.

On my solo visit the following month, I got a quesadilla platter with refried beans and rice. The quesadilla was filled with al pastor and cheese. It was a lot of food and it was quite good.

For a look at the restaurant and everything we ate, please click on an image to launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how I thought they compared to some of the other casual Mexican places we’ve eaten at relatively recently.

Prices, as you can see from the pics of the checks, are both reasonable and in line with similar casual Mexican restaurants in the metro. How would I compare them to that competition? Well, I guess I would say that while I enjoyed the food at both meals a lot and would always be happy to eat there, I don’t know that I would pick them in the neighbourhood over either El Chivo Crazy at Plaza Mexico or the local outpost of Los Ocampo, or indeed the vendors I tried at Mercado Central. And outside of the neighbourhood, I preferred El Super Taco in Burnsville (and not just because they have gorditas as well) as well as Los Paisanos in St. Paul. But, again, I did like La Hacienda too—I wouldn’t discourage you from eating there if you have not been there yet.

Okay, what’s next on the food front? I had hoped to get another couple of Seoul reports out since my last Twin Cities post (on lunch at Hot Grainz) but the aforementioned trip got in the way. So I will get those out later this week. I’m not sure yet where next week’s Twin Cities report will be from as we haven’t yet thought about eating out again. Let’s see how the week goes.