First Taste: El Metro
In the Ukrainian Village area, taco spots are about as prominent as beards and ironic plaid. Good news for me, since I could live off tacos and if there was some sort of taco equivalent for a Willy Wonka-type factory, I'd be the first one in line to break into the factory and fall into a waterfall of tomatillo salsa. But I digress. The recent opening of El Metro at the corner of Chicago and Damen adds yet another taco option to the local fray. It's a risky endeavor in that if not executed properly, the restaurant could quickly disappear off the wayside, losing luster to more deserving options nearby. But El Metro manages to succeed in more ways than one.
(Tacos at El Metro)
Firstly, they really take their Metro moniker to heart. The sunny dining room, bedecked with enough festive decor to make the place feel like a perpetual quinceanera, features a massive mural of public transit-themed menu items, divvied into different categories via colored "train lines." For example, tacos would be the Chicago blue line, while desserts would be the red line, side dishes would be the pink line, etc. The counter service restaurant is comfortable and casual, outfitted with more than enough watermelon-hued banquettes and tables, with friendly, chipper service that gives diners the sense that they actually give a damn.
More proof that they give a damn is in their menu, which goes far beyond the call of taco duty with offbeat dishes not found at other taquerias around town. Each meal begins with a dainty basket of fresh tortilla chips, heaped in an adorable strainer bowl. The chips are (surprisingly) vigorous and (unsurprisingly) addictive, dusted with a moderate amount of salt and served with a bracing salsa. It's a surefire way to whet an appetite for cochinita pibil tacos, featuring an excellent pile of succulent pork, carne asada tacos, and rajas tacos, layered with smoky morsels of poblano and corn. The only unsuccessful taco here is the chicharrone, which flies in the face of what crispy pig skin typically should be by marinating pork belly in tomatillo salsa, resulting in a mushy, gummy hodgepodge of tangy meat goop. But at least the tortillas are virtuous. One can't-miss novelty is El Metro's pambazos, an unusual, curious creation made by stacking guajillo-soaked bread with chorizo, potatoes, sour cream, and cheese. It comes out looking like a sandwich made with a couple spiced chicken breasts as bread, but it's actually a sub-like meal with sweet-spicy bread as a foundation. By soaking the bread in chilies, it adopts a spicy, tender body, which rather detracts from the chorizo but makes for an altogether more flavorful sandwich. To wash it all down, the house horchata is a tad more cloying than I'd like, bordering on vanilla cupcake-like sweetness, but rich and creamy nonetheless if you like that sort of thing.
All in all, El Metro excels for its efforts to set itself apart and boldly try new things. Sometimes they work — guajillo-soaked bread is a crafty way to imbue more flavors into a sandwich — while other times they don't — tomatillo-soaked chicharrones remove the crunch integral to chicharrones. But it's the thought that counts.
- Matt Kirouac