Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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Chef Rene Valenzuela Expands To A New Location [The Taco Bus Adopts A New Baby Brother]

Posted Jul 17, 2009 by Jeff Houck

Updated Jul 17, 2009 at 01:06 PM

My affection for the Mexican restaurant El Taconazo goes way back. It’s a fondness that started after I moved back to the area in 2002 (I grew up in St. Pete), but cemented itself during the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Stanley Cup run when some friends and I discovered eating there gave the team good luck. I later did an “Off the Eaten Path” story on owners Roberto and Monica Morfin.

What I loved about it: It was a direct reflection of the seafood that came from the Morfin’s hometown on the Baja peninsula. The fact you could order torpedo-size burritos and affordable octopus and shrimp ceviche from a kitchen run out of a bus operated behind a small building just amazed me. A group of three could order lunch and not break a $20 bill.

In November 2007, the Morfins sold the business to their cousin, Rene Valenzuela, who owned Taqueria Monterrey in Plant City. I loved El Taconazo so much that I was dubious about any changes he might make.

Since then, Valenzuela has made small tweaks over a long period of time to give the business his own fingerprint. Adding tofu for vegetarians. Keeping the restaurant open seven days a week. Expanding the menu and giving diners more choices of for how they want their meals made. Staying open to 4 a.m. on Thursday through Saturday and offering a late-night menu. Moving equipment to put more tables inside the restaurant.

He also expanded the parking, which was a huge problem. He gave the place a small redecoration. And he closed an adjacent store that the Morfins opened to sell everything from pinatas to CDs, phone cards and money transfers.

Oh, and he officially renamed it The Taco Bus. As he told me at the time, “It’s what everyone calls it anyway.”

He especially raised the restaurant’s profile in February when he invited cookbook author Diana Kennedy, the Julia Child of Mexican cooking, to the restaurant to teach a demonstration. It was a landmark evening. She did another the next night at Brandon’s Rolling Pin Kitchen Emporium that was sold-out as well.

In June, I attended a class he taught at Chefs on the Loose in south Tampa. The food was incredible. The food looked deceptively simple, but he elevated the cuisine with fine ingredients (Duck-filled taquitos? Hello? Who couldn’t love that?).

This sopa, featuring shrimp mounted on a spoonful of guacamole with onion and tomato, was seasoned with a morita chile, a lesser-known cousin of the chipotle. I had never heard of morita peppers until that night. Rene told me they’re sold in Mexican stores here in Tampa.

So you can imagine how pleased I was that I started hearing rumors recently that he was looking to open a new restaurant.

Rene e-mailed me last night that he has purchased Malenas, a Mexican restaurant on Fletcher Avenue in Tampa close to USF. He had hoped to keep it quiet for a few weeks so that he could get the kitchen in order, but word was leaking out.

Valenzuela told me he plans to make the restaurant similar to Taqueria Monterrey, with about half of that menu featured in the new spot. 

“Also, I have my dream come true: we’ll have a lady making fresh tortillas at the front of the kitchen so people can see them and smell them as they get baked on the hot ‘comal’ griddle,” he writes.

“I can never get enough of a good salsa,” he says, so he plans to have a salsa bar where customers can taste about 10 different varieties that are made fresh everyday. No, the two Taco Bus will not be included. (He wants to offer his Taco Bus friends some variety.)

Some of the salsas will be made with tomatillos and avocado, others with roasted chile de arbol, some with habanero.

“We do one with red jalapenos - the ripe fruit has a sweet distinctive flavor, all different and all delicious but all of them pretty hot,” he says.

The bar will offer traditional trimmings like Yucatan red marinated onions, pico de gallo and grilled jalapenos.

As a nod to his university neighbors, he’ll also be expanding the vegan menu.

Don’t get me wrong I love meat. I can’t give it up. That’s why I’m only a “part-time vegetarian,” a day or two a week, or a meal or two a day.

As much as I love my meat, some meatless tacos from Mexico are as good if not tastier than any animal protein. As matter of fact, at this new restaurant for the first time ever, I will put in the menu my favorite taco that happens to be Vegan. I came up with the idea because that’s the taco I order when I go to my taquerias, the ladies in the kitchen know what I’m going to order: bean tacos with a slice of avocado and little shredded cabbage for crunch. The beans have been seasoned with dried Mexican peppers, roasted garlic, epazote and cumin, the tortillas just baked, on top a small ribbon line of brick-orange creamy chile de arbol sauce. That super simple and humble taco, my friend, is as close as you can get to Mexican Heaven.

The grand opening will be in September. When he announces the date, I’ll include it here in The Stew.

Related: Table Conversations podcast with Diana Kennedy.