Let’s taco ’bout tacos
Naco Taco serves up sizeable tacos right up the street on Mass Ave
Tara Lee–The Tech
Naco Taco
★★★✩✩
Mexican, $$
Sun - Wed: 11:30 am – 11 pm
Thu - Fri: 11:30 am – 12 am
Sat: 11 am – 12 am
297 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA 02139
I remember when Naco Taco first opened up on Massachusetts Avenue two years ago — the wait time on weekend nights crept up to the hour mark, and everyone was intrigued by the blinking string of lights that looped around the food truck stationed outside the restaurant.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the overall value of my Naco Taco experience the first time around, so I recently gave it another shot. A friend and I shared five tacos to sample as much of the taco menu as possible.
The portions were sizeable. The corn tortillas were slightly larger than my hands, and they were piled high enough with filling that made eating them without spilling anything slightly precarious.
First up, we tried the al pastor taco with charbroiled pork, onion, cilantro, and burnt pineapple. I loved this combination of flavors, especially with the fragrant cilantro complementing the sweet touch of pineapple; however, I did find the pork to be a bit dry. The Cochinita Pibil taco included pulled pork, radish, and a cilantro chile crema with grilled green onions on top. This taco had a lot more flavor, and the spears of radish added a nice crunch to the texture.
We also tried one of the vegetarian tacos, the smoked tofu taco, which came with salsa arriera, refried beans, and cotija crema on top of a vegetarian tortilla. The tofu was actually just two strips of lightly fried tofu, and I wasn’t particularly satisfied with its texture against the salsa and beans.
Lastly, we also tried the lamb taco, which came with carrots, cucumbers, and radish, and the chorizo taco, which came with baby yukon potato, cilantro, onion, and salsa. These two tacos were pleasantly flavorful, but, like the other tacos, nothing extraordinary stood out.
Overall, Naco Taco has definitely upped their portion sizes from the last time I visited, but it’s still a bit of a stretch to justify $4 for a single average taco.