About a week ago, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported Rusty Taco will be going into the new shopping center anchored by Aldi on Valley Mills Drive. They quoted the shopping center owner and about the same time we received an email from David Weaver from Rusty Taco confirming that the Texas-based taco chain had signed a lease.
On Monday, I was in Fort Worth and, wanting to provide the freshest information to you, WacoFork friends, I drove over to Dallas to check out the Rusty Taco restaurant on Greenville Avenue. Pictured are a shrimp taco, a breakfast taco (they serve them all day) with chorizo, eggs and cheese, and a fried chicken taco.
Was it any good? Yes, it was. I'm excited about it coming to Waco. But I have to qualify that response.
I'm a huge fan of Taco Deli in Austin. I've also heard folks rave about Torchy's in Austin, but I've always been partial to Taco Deli. So I wanted Rusty Taco to be as good as Taco Deli, which I guess means I wanted it to be almost just like Taco Deli. And, of course, it wasn't. Not only do I set the bar too high, sometimes I set it too specifically.
My friend Brian Patterson, who somewhat recently lived in the vicinity of Lower Greenville, had dined at Rusty Taco a time or two. He said it's kind of a cross between Torchy's and Taco Deli. I'll buy that.
As mentioned, I sampled a breakfast taco, a fried chicken taco and a shrimp taco. The fried chicken taco was the best, though the breakfast taco was delicious as well — an excellent blend of chorizo. The shrimp taco wasn't bad. Maybe I'm just not crazy about shrimp or maybe the baja sauce was tangier and runnier than I wanted it to be.
Rusty Taco will join Smashburger and Mama Fu's in the Aldi shopping center. Latest word from my best source within those three establishments — Brad Brown from Smashburger — was that we could start seeing those restaurants open in the middle of the summer.
I'm looking forward to all three, but I'm not shy about ranking them in order of the level I'm looking forward to them: 1) Smashburger, 2) Rusty Taco, 3) Mama Fu's.
