Let's Taco-bout it

A few weeks ago, I started seeing a lot of hype about this new taco place opening up in the Midtown area of Atlanta. The Instagram posts promised colorful tacos, frozen margaritas, a well-lit interior and excellent patio space. Plus a rainbow bench outside as a landmark/place to wait for your Über or Lyft to show up after you've gorged yourself on tequila and lamb barbacoa. I don't know if you follow a lot of food writers, critics, bloggers, ... people like me who just like to write for a living and then write more about food after work ... on social media, but Instagram deserves some serious props for being a visual smorgasbord. We eat with our eyes first, and this platform provides enough tastebud stimulation to make you hungry even if you just ate.

The poblano rice at Cactus House

Suffice to say that there was something about this place's Insta aesthetic that made my eyes big and my mouth water. And plus, if you've been following Meatetarian Eats for any period of time, you'll know tacos are some of my favorite things to eat at any time of day, night or wee hours of the morning #ThanksTacoBell. I had to be in Midtown last night for a super-cool engineering event at MODA, which is the Museum of Design Atlanta, and I left my staff meeting with some time to kill before the workshop started. Plenty of time to run into Cactus House.

Some logistics information: if you've ever spent any time in Midtown Atlanta, you know that parking is primo (probably why they have that bench). But plus side to this place, it is next door to a public parking garage. It'll cost you less than $5 to spend an hour there, which for Atlanta parking prices is cheap. I loathe searching for parking, so I would like to take a moment and offer some Snap Cup snaps and golf claps to the owners of Cactus House for finding real estate next to a wealth of parking for customers.

Another random note (I swear I'll get to the food in a second) — there's a lot of fun graphic artwork painted on the walls in and outside of Cactus House. For example, the giant mural with a sugar skull inside the parking deck, which proclaims, "Don't do drugs, eat tacos." That, friends, is some wonderful life advice.

Anyway. The part you really came for (other than my searing with and exhaustive ooze of Southern charm) — los tacos.

I got two. And when asked by my server, the manager and a man who turned out to be the owner how they tasted, I responded with "pretty good." That's not a lie. I eat a lot of tacos, a lot of different kinds of tacos, and I must say, these have a great foundation ... but there's some room for improvement, particularly in the seasoning realm.

Fried avocado, tomatoes and creamy
sauce on top of a corn tortilla

Let us begin with the fried avocado taco. Yes. Fried. Avocado. First, perfect texture on the breading — crisp, didn't fall off the avo slices, which were delightfully thick. There were also some charred tomato slices, a drizzle of a creamy white sauce and a schmear of possibly tomatillo salsa, all topped with a sprinkle of fresh-chopped cilantro. I am a fan of this taco. There's texture, there's richness and a little sweetness from the tomato. My one point of contention was that there needs to be just a dash more salt in that batter. When I make avocado toast or put avocados on a sandwich or make guac, I have to put some salt on there. Just a little bit to really enhance the flavors not only of the avocado, but of the other ingredients on the taco.

The second taco I ordered was the pork carnitas. Carnitas, by the way, is a traditional Mexican way of cooking pork in oil or fat until it's melt-in-your-mouth tender. I have two issues with the way Cactus House's carnitas was prepared. One, again with the flavoring. The meat was a little bland — however, I could gloss over that considering that everything else on top was bomb, like more avocado, a spicy green salsa, fresh onions and more cilantro — and it needed to be braised a little longer. The meat wasn't tough, but it definitely wasn't falling apart when I bit into it. In fact, most of the meat I ended up eating with my fingers instead of in the taco itself because it fell out or I bit it out in huge chunks, rather than being able to eat everything all at once.

The pork carnitas taco had great toppings,
but room for improvement on the meat

My only other qualm about the tacos is the tortilla. These were corn tortillas, which I love love love, but there's a reason most places give you a double-stack of corn tortillas. Flour tortillas are a lot more pliant than wheat or corn tortillas, which have a tendency to split when you fold them up. I know it may be a ding in the bottom line, but I think offering two tortillas per taco would be a good move (and I would also throw in an extra 50 cents or so to make it happen).

There are a lot more on the menu that I want to go back and try — grouper, shrimp, lamb barbacoa, for starters, plus a mushroom taco (that sounds so FUN GUYS) — so I'm not going to let something like a splitting tortilla or too little salt keep me away from $3 and $4.50 tacos. I also need to go back and try the frozè, which is the latest millennial cocktail concoction taking over the Interwebs. It's a rosè slushie, so obviously this will require both a trip to Cactus House and a trip to Venkman's for a compare-and-contrast post.

Oh! I almost forgot, which is a shame because this was my favorite part. Do yourself a flavor and order the poblano rice. I am obsessed with Spanish/Mexican rice, and this was delicious. The rice is cooked with carrots, corn and poblano peppers, and seasoned with cilantro, which gives it this incredible freshness. Of course, if you are one of those poor lost souls who thinks cilantro tastes like soap, you should maybe forego this recommendation and order the yucca fries, which are going to be on my plate next time.

I also feel like I need to give a shout to the other tacos I had this week while enjoying beer at Gate City Brewing, which is just down the street from me in Roswell. I don't know how breweries do it where you live, but in Georgia, the true breweries right now don't have food on-premise, and instead support local businesses by bringing in food trucks or catering. Gate City had Carne 250, a Tex-Mex barbecue stand, outside serving up King Ranch tacos.

Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was just the fact that I love tacos, but holy smoking pig, Batman. For $10 you could get two loaded tacos with smoked pork, brisket (that's a beef cut, just FYI), mole (a deep-flavored sauce, not the animal that tears up your yard), tomatoes, queso and like three other things I'm forgetting ... and I didn't take a picture of the sign to remember, so my bad. My only suggested change to these would be taking out the tortilla chips embedded in the taco filling. I don't think they added much to it, but if you feel like they're an essential ingredient to the whole Tex-Mex feel, maybe crumble a few on top. Being part of the filling made them pretty soggy.

Are you tired of listing to me taco-bout tacos? No?! (Me neither!) Let me leave you with this little bit of associated dating wisdom from this MODA workshop that spawned this entire taco venture: "Take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are nachos."

She's Back! Also, Pie.

Oh, hey y'all! It's been a hot minute.

Chocolate chess pie from my very first visit.
photo | Dallas Anne Duncan

Before I delve into the Best Pie Shop On The Planet (or, at least in my humble opinion, the best pie shop north of I-285), let me explain why the Meatetarian went MIA for 14 months ... and share with you my plan going forward!

I took on too much. I had a full-time job. I started a magazine. I added volunteer duties. I wanted to be creative. I wanted to knit; to become a director for my direct sales company; to freelance to help support the magazine. At some point I lost my way and stopped writing completely and wondered what on Earth was wrong with me that I couldn't make things work. Kind of happens when you give 2,500 percent of your time, your heart, your drive and your dreams to a business plan that is not successful (or, at least, successful in terms of what you'd like to see). At one point this year, I even began avoiding finding fun places to eat out because every second away from my computer was a second I felt I should be working, and I guilted myself into believing that was the reason my dream business was going stagnant.

I lost my drive. I did the bare minimum at work and writing seemed a burden. I forgot why I wrote in the first place: because I love writing, because I want to teach people about food and farming and why journalism matters.

On Sunday, I made a decision. I needed to make a mental shift forward, away from all the "what-ifs" and "woulda, coulda, shoulda." I needed to make focused, small efforts each day ... each week ... each month, until I was in a place where I enjoyed all of the hats I wear versus dreading putting them on. One of the ways this will happen is weekly Meatetarian Eats updates, every Thursday during my lunch hour, which will go live on Fridays.

This week, I want you to close your eyes and open your pie hole.

I heard about Pie Hole, a fabulous, eensy-weensy cottage bakery in Roswell, Georgia, long before I knew where it was. My aunt and uncle brought a couple of pies to family Christmas a couple years ago, and back in March, I accidentally stumbled upon it while taking myself on a window-shopping excursion down Canton Street. You can't see the bakery from the road; there's only a small sign with a clip-art pie image, the words "Pie Hole" and a giant arrow pointing up a narrow dirt drive.

"Oh heck yes," thinks me, who just got done eating a relatively healthy meal of a salad and sandwich. "I think I'll have dessert."

For $5, I sampled a hefty serving of chocolate chess pie (see top photo). Bestill my heart, y'all. It was decadent. So moist! So rich! So perfect to slowly lick off a fork, eyes closed, hoping no one is watching you savor this sweet moment.

S'mores pie. Coke bottle for scale of the toasted marshmallow
topping. photo | Dallas Anne Duncan

Pie Hole became a regular stop. When my family came up to visit, it's where we took Nanny for her birthday (I highly recommend the s'mores pie — a thick, chocolate filling atop graham cracker crust, slathered with gooey toasted marshmallow fluff). The lovely owner of Pie Hole knows me as "the girl who takes pies to Augusta" on account of me stopping in before every birthday and major holiday to pick up at least one of her incredible creations.

Mom got peanut butter pie for Mother's Day and key lime for her birthday. The homemade whipped cream topping on the key lime pie, by the way, isn't just homemade. It is made for you when you pick up the pie. While you wait. Whoever happens to be in the kitchen when you walk in stops what they're doing, pours some potion ingredients into a mixer and whips up some magic. No one does this anymore!

My most recent foray to Pie Hole was for this weekend's "Fakesgiving," the adorable moniker I gave to the super-early Thanksgiving celebration my family hosted. Two pies came back to Augusta this time — one, a pecan, to celebrate Daddy's birthday, and the other apple. I'll tackle the pecan first by saying I am not a pecan pie fan. The pecans never seem seasoned right, so you end up with these flavorless nuts on top of a sugary, syrupy filling and gross, crumbly crust. But Pie Hole did it up right: the pecans were the best part!

They were big, seasoned with cinnamon and all those warm fall flavors, crisped together almost like a streusel topping. The filling was sweet but not overly so, and it had a nice tackiness to it — no runaway syrup here! We ate it at room temperature moments after arriving in town, but I can only imagine it would be even better heated up and served with ice cream on the side.

But the star of the weekend was, undoubtedly, The Apple Pie Gifted From Gods.

The half-devoured apple pie at "Fakesgiving." photo | Dallas Anne Duncan

Layer. Upon. Layer. of thin-sliced, north Georgia apples, baked perfectly so they are soft yet not falling apart; still with just a hint of crispness. The flavor is a perfect lightly sweet apple-cinnamon. It's like you're eating a bite of pure fall. Oh, and how tall this pie is! The beautiful crust is sky-high, and that's not much of an exaggeration. And each millimeter of that beautifully rustic, hand-formed crust is stuff with those apples. Leaving that pie on Nanny's kitchen table to drive back to Atlanta was not an easy life choice (but we would have devoured it on the way home, so we decided to sacrifice our sweet tooth to share with everyone else). Even our relatives from Australia, who were in town to visit, got to try this magnificence.

In the entire six days since Pie Pick-Up Day, it's been really hard to resist the nine-minute drive to get more pie. Did I mention how ridiculously affordable these handmade pies are? Seriously. A slice and a Coke'll cost you maybe $8, and whole pies are less than $30.

Now the decision remains: which one do I take home for Christmas next month?