Trudis Birria de Chivo

Beechnut @ Bissonnet

UPDATE APRIL 2015:  CLOSED.  ALL BUT THE BASKIN ROBBINS ON THIS CORNER IS BEING DEMOLISHED. AN ALDI WILL BE PART OF THE REPLACEMENTS.

It's been about a year and a half since I've been to this place. Out of sight, out of mind and I don't drive by this intersection as often as I used to, plus they've always been open very limited hours. In fact, for a long time after they started serving, I thought they had come and gone and I had missed them. Recently I made it a point to check them out again.

They serve only one thing - birria de chivo. Birria means mess or stew, I think, and it can involve any meat but around here it usually means goat and this place makes that clear. They're located in what was originally a Bambolino's Drive-thru Pizza by the Slice kiosk (wasn't that one of Ninfa's restaurant group ventures?) and were only open Friday-Saturday-Sunday from around daybreak until they ran out, usually by early afternoon. For such a limited menu, limited hours operation, they did very well.

There was only a handwritten menu, scrawled on a piece of cardboard and taped in a window and practically unreadable. Fortunately, the owner speaks some English.

There have been some changes. The piece of cardboard is gone, replaced by a bright yellow piece of poster board in one of the windows. If you stare at it intently, in just the right light, you can see that at one time it had writing on it, perhaps a menu, perhaps an advertisement for an eye doctor or something. The deck has been expanded and the hours and days of operation also.

They didn't recognize me from long ago; I was told they only serve goat and only tacos, plates or kilos. I got a couple of tacos to go, took just one bite, and started kicking myself for not having been back for so long. These are good tacos, among the very best I've had all year, tender stewed goat seasoned with the chile broth, with cebolla y cilantro, a small side of pico and a fiery, smokey salsa plus of course some lime. There are probably at least 2 or 3 chillies used (guajillo, cascabel, maybe something else?) Some day I will have to do a taste test between these tacos, the borrego from Gerardo's on Patton and the lamb barbacoa from Huarache Azteca Express in Stafford. It'll be close, I bet.

I went back again soon to get a plate. The weather was a bit nippy for me so I got it to go - a 32 oz cup about half full of meats and other pieces of the animal, about half broth. This came with the onions and cilantro added plus the pico and salsa. Tortillas are extra. The 'plate' comes two ways, 'dry' (also known as barbacoa) and 'wet,' also known as consomme. I've always gotten the latter but I presume if you get the former you do get some of the broth - you wouldn't want to miss that. This is snout to tail cookery; depending on what the ladle scoops up from the pot, you'll get interesting little bits and pieces of some of the rest of the animal; sometimes you get very little of the offal.

I always seem to have leftover tortillas from take-out from some taqueria or carniceria so I've never gotten their tortillas but as I recall, the price was $1. My tacos were $2 each, the plate was $8; it was enough for 3 meals for me with tortillas and another side.

I looked back at my notes and saw that back when, the menu offered platos chicas and platos grandes; I don't know which I got this time or maybe they only offer one size now.

They're open 6 days a week now, though still for very limited (and varying) hours. Closed Mondays, they open Tuesday and Wednesday at 4pm and are open into the evening. Other days they open around daybreak and are open until 2pm except Friday and Saturday when they stay open until 10 pm. During the week, or at least when school is in session, you go up to the window to order; other times, the family's children act as servers - you give your order to them and they pass it to the person in the window.

There are frequently other vendors on the deck, selling beverages or cds, etc. On Saturday and Sunday mornings, especially, the tables will be crowded with whole families chowing down on plates of tacos.

Be sure to dress appropriately for the weather.

H-TownstrEATS - Mobile

Get Thee some of These:


Pork Belly Taco with lightly pickled cucumber and Butternut Squash Taco with cilantro yogurt dressing. Incredible. Best street food I've had in Houston and I've had some very good stuff from the competition.

This is a very promising new truck, chef-driven as they say, with a varying menu (I've only seen these two items a couple of times). They're doing it right in my book: moving around instead of picking one spot (Montrose, Village, Greenway, for instance) and making good use of Twitter and Facebook to keep fans apprised of where they're going to be and what they're going to be offering. Not to mention serving up some great food.


I was a little less thrilled with a couple of other offerings I tried, the Korean style sirloin beef taco with onions, cilantro and queso - this was not bad but a little unimaginative, perhaps in the toppings. I was hoping for another something mind-blowing but this was not that much different from other beef tacos. And the grilled chicken burrito/wrap (forget just what they called it) - this was very promising to behold but wraps always seem to me to be less than the sum of their parts and that was the case with this.

Both of these might have benefited from the application of some of the condiments available on the truck but I had already driven away. There are several bottled condiments and a couple in squeeze bottles, plus some chopped peppers and possibly some relish?

I've seen a great looking Ancho Chili Frito Pie, a pretty regular offering I think (glad to see somebody offering chili on one of these trucks). The bacon-wrapped hot dog looked over-dressed for my taste but I plan to give it a try. When I tried to move in on someone who'd chosen those two items to get a better look, he got very protective.

If you've been holding back from trying street food for some reason, one visit to this one will likely change your mind and it's a good place to start, but there are already several others of the same caliber and there have been several new ones hit the streets in just the last few weeks.

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El Punto Criollo revisited

I stopped by Saturday at this cart's new location on Beechnut just outside Highway 6. I guess it's the same cart as I encountered a couple of months ago up near I-10 - this one does have a menu board on the side and a completely different crew but it's the same phone number.

I knew the empanadas were good so I tried the Patacones, the Venezuelan sandwich that substitutes mashed, fried plantain for bread. This was the juiciest, most flavorful carne mechada I've had with a little bit of queso that I failed to ask the name of, maybe some refritos, I wasn't sure, and that's about it. There are bottled hot sauces on the shelf on the side of the cart but you have to ask for the guasaca, the Venezuelan guacamole sauce, and I forgot to and it wasn't offered. It would have made this a bit better. It was a pretty hefty sandwich for $1, much more filling than a typical $1 taco, but it was pretty heavy in the stomach because of all the grease soaked up by the plantain.

This place offers a plate lunch of Pabellon Criollo, the national dish of carne mechada, black beans and rice; I've got to go back and try that.

A sign in the window advertised Hallacas (ayacas), the Venezuelan holiday tamale. I've wanted to get my hands on one of these for a couple of years but missed out so I grabbed one to take home and heat up later. It was a lot smaller than I expected, about the size of 2 or 3 Tex-Mex tamales - I was expecting something like the just-one-makes-a-meal nacatamales of Colombia or Guatemala - but it was awfully good. There was beef, chicken and pork plus green olives, capers and raisins and a pimento or sweet red pepper for decoration. Also unlike those others which are about 50% masa, this was only about 20% masa - it was mostly about the fillings.

These are said to be so labor intensive they're only prepared around the holidays and people stock up on them in the freezer; I did likewise, going back a couple of days later to pick up several more.

The Hallacas will probably only be available through the end of the year and are $5 each.

Since they are outside the city limits, they have a table and a couple of chairs under an awning for your heightened dining enjoyment.

My earlier review.

Sign up to be a SOFTie

Jay Rascoe of Guns and Tacos, J.R. Cohen and Dan Joyce have launched Save Our Food Trucks, an organization that's going to work with mobile vendors and the City to hopefully make some changes in the city regulations regarding these business which are believed to be some of the most restrictive. It's a worthy effort; the food truck movement in Houston has been crawling along like traffic in the Galleria area at Christmas.

They're going to be talking to the operators themselves to determine what they think the issues are. Hopefully we'll also see some explanation from the City about why some of these restrictions exist and then of course, the dining elite, ahem, should be allowed to sound off.

You can keep up with developments on the website.

Way to go guys!