Taco City x Chef Tastebudz — Restaurant in Dallas

This is the kind of place I want to love but there are a few glaring issues. I hope the following can be taken as constructive feedback to the restaurant. The biggest issue by far is time. Specifically, how long each order takes. The two major factors I see are a mismatch on customer expectations vs type of establishment and inefficient BOH operations.

I’m not here to complain about a missing item from a complicated order at a busy sit down restaurant. But waiting 45 min for something that should have taken 5-10 min gave me a lot of time to wonder how it could possibly take that long. I’m no stranger to waiting in egregiously long lines for food, but this is not that kind of place. It’s basically a parked food truck. People want to be in and out quickly. They may even opt to come here instead of a dine in restaurant expecting it will be quicker without all the extra layers of being seated, rounds with wait staff, etc. Furthermore, the perception of wait time greatly increases when you’re standing on the edge of a rather unscenic sidewalk and have no bathroom to use or water to drink (they didn’t provide tap water).

This is not to say street food joints can’t attract large crowds and have long wait times. In fact many do. I just can’t imagine how this place can scale to achieve that, given its current operational issues. So much can be streamlined. Most ingredients are shared among all dishes and can be prepped and batched in advance without a great reduction in quality. I wonder if too much attention is being placed on each individual item rather than distributing preparation across multiple similar items. For a menu that is primarily tacos, quesadillas, burritos, and uses mostly the same meat, the preparation should be highly parallelizable. Customers shouldn’t have to wait 5 min between each announced order when they are eating almost the same thing.

I assume the best intentions and believe the chef cares deeply about the craft and desires to serve high quality food to everyone. Unfortunately I believe this level of attention to detail ultimately results in an overall subpar customer experience. Tradeoffs need to be made, and I’m sure you can satisfy more people getting out orders 2-3x faster rather than spending that time to get every detail right. It’ll also be much more sustainable for the business, because I really cannot imagine staying afloat (in this economy!) if you’re only serving like 10 people an hour and already charging pretty steep prices. If people want that extra 10% attention to detail, they can find a Michelin star place and pay 10x the price. This menu has cheetos in their burritos, so let’s be real it’s not gonna get a star anytime soon and shouldn’t even try to.

While I have mad respect for those still trying to provide quality when every other place is trying to figure out how to cut corners and squeeze every penny out, I am genuinely concerned that this place may struggle to stay afloat without making some necessary operational changes. I do not claim to have any real info on the state of their business, and everything I mentioned is mostly a hunch. But I’ve seen places I liked that really cared about quality get crushed for similar reasons. And I hope that doesn’t happen here, because the food was good and it would be great if more people can continue...

Chef Tastebudz is located on the corner of Jackson and Record street on the West side of Downtown Dallas just South of the West End district. The location is easy to access in an area with less traffic than most of the other areas of downtown.

Ordering is easy with a sidewalk sign, menu at the ordering counter and friendly staff willing to offer suggestions. Seating is limited with a 4 chair bar.

I am a fan of Birria tacos so that was my order for this visit.

Birria tacos- crispy corn tortilla with plenty of beef birria meat and cheese with fresh chopped white onion a lime slice and cilantro on the side with salsa and beef consommé. The spices were great, the meat was soft and flavorful and the cheese was perfectly melted.

Birria and chicken quesadilla- crispy flour tortillas stacked with meat, cheese, onion and cilantro inside with like slices and beef consommé on the side. This was similar to the taco but with soft stringy chicken.

#dallastexas #dfw #tacos #dallastacos #birria #birriatacos #BirriaQuesadilla...

I was attending a work conference all week at the big hotel. Tonight was our big event and the event planner couldn't make it in time so I had to do it. That meant that I had to skip dinner to get the work party going. After a night of wine, bourbon, and small snacks, I was starving. I got out of the ride share and saw a small glowing light across the street. I reluctantly walked over. As I got closer I realized it was a Birria window! I normally get Birria in San Antonio so I wasn't expecting much. I look at the small menu and a customer recommends the taco plate. I was too tired to consider anything else so I went for it. My mind was blown. This is a legit Birria window and stands up to anything in Austin or San Antonio. This area of town is a late night food desert but Taco City is holding it down on the corner waiting for you to come order. My wait time was less than ten minutes. The tacos were a 10 and the service was great. If you are hungry and in...