First there was Igni, chef Aaron Turner’s intimate all-fire, all-local tasting-menu restaurant in a Geelong backstreet. Then got here The Hot Chicken Project, Turner’s love letter to Nashville-style fried rooster. For his subsequent trick, our man is zooming in on one other much-loved dish from the Americas: tacos. Enter Tacos y Liquor, a compact 40-seat taqueria taking up the previous Cupboard Bar web site on Little Malop Road in Geelong.
Whereas Turner is drawing inspiration from journeys to Mexico – he documented his trip as part of Somekind’s Take Away cookbook series – his experiences with Californian taco vans and New York bodegas additionally formed his newest opening.
“Whether or not you’re [eating tacos] in an open-air market, on the road nook, or from a taco monitor and sitting on a nook within the solar, there’s noise, there’s individuals, you scent the town and also you scent the cooking,” says Turner. “It’s fairly cool and it’s fairly addictive.”
The menu, just like the house, is tight and runs to simply 4 tacos: carne asada, cooked utilizing a rotating choice of Sher-brand Wagyu secondary cuts; al pastor, made with pork stomach from close by Raven’s Creek Farm; and rooster tinga – shredded rooster in a tomato, onion and chipotle sauce. Vegetarians can hook into tacos full of mushroom and huitlacoche, a fungus discovered on corn that’s also called Mexican truffle. A burrito choice can also be obtainable for purchasers who’re particularly hungry or ordering takeaway. (Turner appropriately believes that tacos don’t journey effectively and solely serves them to dine-in friends.)
Scallop and cactus make cameos on the small rotating menu of tostadas (deep-fried tortillas). Facet dishes embrace road corn, chicken-fat rice with beans, and regional specials reminiscent of birra (a beef consommé with shredded beans). Though Turner has a fame for doing issues in-house at Igni, he’s leaving the tortilla-making to Melbourne’s peerless La Tortilleria.
“What they make is 10 instances higher than what I can do,” he says. “Let the professionals do it.”
Just like the title suggests, drinks are the opposite half of Tacos y Liquor. There are Margaritas and Palomas, in fact. Mezcals and tequilas are additionally on excessive rotation, whereas beer and wine are on faucet, poured into rustic half-litre jars if you happen to so need. Bottled wine can also be that can be purchased from The Scorching Hen Undertaking throughout the highway. All of the booze is taken into account and to the purpose, which is what Tacos y Liquor is all about.
“That fattiness, the acidity, the underlying fermented corn flavour from the tortilla: it’s fairly addictive stuff and it makes you content,” Turner says. “And I feel now, greater than ever, that feeling of consolation and happiness and familiarity is main, isn’t it?”
Supply: www.broadsheet.com.au
