Classic dips like guacamole and sikil pak (made with pumpkin seeds) will share menu space with tacos stuffed with octopus, suckling pig, and crispy yucca, as well [Isabella's] interpretation of fajitas, taquitos, and flautas.

The price is $119 per person (tax and gratuity included). Reserve your seat here.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Not listed: El Centro's cactus taco

National foodie site Serious Eats surveys some of the D.C.-area's best taco spots. Six of nine places on the list are in the suburbs. But the District proper is represented: Two Adams Morgan-area eateries, Super Tacos ("part of the drunk food culture here") and Pica Taco ("[p]erhaps the best barbacoa of the entire taco trip"), earn a mention. So does Taqueria Juquilita in Columbia Heights ("hands down the most authentic experience"), despite the fact that surveyors had a tough time finding the place: "I was at the correct address, but I was outside of an apartment building. I called the phone number I had, and the man says, “'Do you see my wife in the window above you? She’ll throw the key down.'” Some notable omissions: Oyamel, Casa Oaxaca, and not surprisingly, El Centro D.F.

What's your favorite filled tortilla in the District?

Logo courtesy of Surfside

"Gosh, I could happily die drowning in that delicious green tomatillo sauce." [DonRocks]

"The slow-cooked carnitas are subtley and perfectly seasoned and melt in your mouth. The carne asada is surprisingly tender and tasty. The meats each have their own unique flavor. The green salsa is my favorite over the red." [Yelp]

"Just sampled a couple taco's this evening. Let me tell you it was really tasty well seasoned and the fresh made tortilla pops in your mouth." [Frozen Tropics]

These tacos won't last, though. The pop-up taco stand will go away by April. But these tacos are certainly wonderful appetizers for what's in store for the H Street food scene when the highly anticipated and promisingly innovative Toki Underground opens. (No pressure, gentlemen.)

My first thought walking into Surfside wasn’t exactly flattering: This place looks like Chipotle meets Folly Beach.

Not that there’s anything wrong with Chipotle — I actually like the place — but I came here to write about bar food. I'm sorry, but selling Coronas and margaritas doesn’t make Chipotle a bar anymore than it does this Glover Park taco stand. The small, six-stool bar tucked into the back corner at Surfside, however, is decidedly closer to my wheelhouse.

I decided to skip the front counter and just place an order with the bartender, thus avoiding the snaking line and making the place feel less like a fast food chain. At the bar, I was flanked on one side by a thin brunette drinking Budweisers and, on the other, by a recent graduate drinking straight from a pitcher of margaritas with a straw. Bar food indeed.

While enduring an onslaught of one-liners and offered tequila shots (which I took with a smile), I tore into fish tacos and contemplated how this fast-casual establishment was, in 2008, awarded two and a half stars by the Washington Post.  That’s the same score Todd Gray’s Equinox received in the recently released Fall Dining Guide.  Not too shabby for fish tacos and burritos.

My Maui Maui tacos were stuffed to the hilt with freshly grilled fish, a salsa of black beans, corn, and cilantro, and loose guacamole that I mopped from my plate. Rice and beans were a palatable but obvious filler. I preferred them spiked with the neon green El Yucateco sauce stationed at the bar.

Condiments should be Surfside’s next focus. Frankly, I prefer my hot sauces with a little less Blue No. 1 additive. My new friend the graduate, however, doesn’t seem to mind pre-packaged pepper purees. He's halfway through a doused quesadilla that looks nicely charred. Watching him eye up the premium tequilas that line the wall, I'm suddenly all too glad my shot-taking days are behind me. Well, mostly behind me.

As far as promotions go, this one is pretty simple: Wear your smug "I Voted" sticker (one that you got at a polling station, not one that you tore off your co-worker's chest in anger) and get a free taco today at California Tortilla.

It's a promotion with a civic mind. Well, to a degree.

According to the "official" rules of the giveaway, you can also just scream, "I love Election Day!" and get your free taco. You can be, in other words, a lazy, undemocratic-minded slug and still get your freebie. That is, if you can get your fat ass off the couch to order it.

You can find the nearest California Tortilla location here.

It seems appropriate that, on the heels of this week's cover story about food trucks and the brick and mortars that want to slash their tires (metaphorically speaking, OK?!), Y&H should focus on District Taco, a food cart that's moving to the great indoors. Owner Osiris Hoil figures it only makes sense to place his business under a permanent roof.

No, it's not what you think. It has nothing to do with District Taco's own well-publicized battle with a quasi-Mexican chain that apparently pulled the right strings to force the cart to abandon its popular patch of concrete outside the WJLA-TV building in Rosslyn. Hoil says the decision has as much to do with time management as anything.

He spends a lot of time in the kitchen preparing his Yucatan-style meals. The pork for his carnitas, for example, needs a seven-hour braise. The slow-cooked beans for his vegetarian tacos require constant attention. "They take such a long time to cook," Hoil says about his beans. "I have to be there or I'm afraid something will be on fire."

Since moving between cart and kitchen is often unmanageable and sometimes costly (read: beans left unattended and tossed in the trash), Hoil figures he should just bring the crowd to his food instead of always hauling his food out to the crowd. Besides, the boss has 2,700 Twitter followers to tell him he's doing something worth turning into an institution. "The thing is," Hoil says, "we have a lot of regulars."

He's hoping they'll follow him to District Taco's brick-and-mortar debut this fall in the former Restaurant Vero space at 5723 Lee Highway in Arlington.

His fans will certainly have more reasons to visit. Hoil is planning to expand the menu that's based on his mother's recipes from the family farm in Tekax, Yucatan. Aside from his terrific tacos, breakfast and otherwise, Hoil will serve Yucatan-style ceviche with habanero pepper as well as peninsula favorites like puc-choc and molletes. Hoil even has his mom's recipes for carne asada, burrito mojado (a wet-style burrito with a home-made salsa), and huevos rancheros.

The ironic thing is now that District Taco will have its own space from which to cook and serve, Hoil doesn't intend to spend all his time there. He plans to put his brother in charge of the new open kitchen at the fixed location, while he manages the cart, which he plans to keep rolling. "I want to get another [cart]," Hoil says, his eye clearly on the city after which District Taco takes its name. Whenever regulations are passed that will allow new sidewalk vendors in D.C., the owner plans to have a cart ready to roll onto the streets.

It's a point of pride for Hoil.  He says he gets a lot of guff from Washingtonians about a cart named District Taco that's based in NoVa. "I get Tweets all the time," Hoil admits. He says their messages are direct: "'Shame on you. You shouldn't call yourself District Taco.'"

He wants to silence them with a D.C.-based cart.

What Hoil will never silence is the street-food life that may appear outside his new restaurant, tentatively scheduled to open in late October or early November. "If you have a restaurant and they take your customers, it's not their fault," he says about street vendors.

You have to, he adds, just get better as a restaurant.

Leave it to Chow's enterprising James Norton, he of the supertaster disposition, to tackle the latest fast-food controversy: Taco Bell's roll out this month of its Cantina Tacos line, which is the national chain's attempt to keep it real, man. The mega-food-service tacos are allegedly based on genuine Latin street food.

The media backlash has been swift, with food writers from taco-truck-heavy areas employing pet food metaphors, as you might expect:

• The OC Weekly compared the proteins in TB's tacos to "Fancy Feast™ chunky-style kibble."
• The Fresno Bee compared the carnitas to "wet dog food."

Norton is not about to stoop to standard-issue Purina references. He conducts a side-by-side comparison of Taco Bell's products with those from a Mexican taqueria in Minneapolis, where Norton is based, just to "see how far apart the two are." Spoiler alert: Norton, with his dry affectation, calls Taco Bell's carnitas a "hot mess."

Shut Up, Foodies! is a delightfully cheeky site — sort of the thinking man's Food Network Humor. It's a destination that loves to skewer the pretensions of the food world, as declared in SUF's in-your face manifesto, which reads in part:

Your chickens won't save the world and we don't want the life story of everything on the menu. We don't care what you eat — we just want you to lower the volume. Also, please stop talking about ramps.

I read with interest SUF's latest post shredding the growing, gourmet culture of food trucks, and the pampered palates who embrace these rolling gustatory wagons. A sample quote:

One thing that really irks me about the food truck thing is that it’s only become a “trend” now that food trucks are “gourmet” and run by middle class people. I grew up in Los Angeles going to taco trucks all the damn time, and since living in New York have eaten multiple falafels, pretzels, and ice cream sandwiches from food trucks.

And it’s even more irksome when you read about people like Oleg Voss, “a 28-year-old culinary school graduate and one-time investment banker.” He had to give up his lucrative job in Vienna to open his veal cutlet cart, because of “the brutal economic recession.” That is brutal!

It seems like “I opened a niche gourmet food business” is the new “I found myself.” Who needs an ashram when you can sell artisanal delicacies to people who enjoy the added flavor of self-righteous foodiness? Oh and isn’t it funny, hahaha, when people who have been working on the street for their entire lives don’t take kindly to being pushed out of business by a trend?

For years now, I've shared a similar opinion about the metro area's food truck scene, which, I'm sorry, did not suddenly mushroom into existence with the addition of Rebel Heroes, the Fojol Brothers, and the Red Hook Lobster Pound rig.

No, Montgomery and Prince George's counties have enjoyed a vibrant food-truck culture for years. But it's been virtually ignored by the non-Latino communities because the humble pupusa and taco don't have the same sex appeal as buttery Maine lobster rolls or cream-deficient butter chicken served in a Styrofoam container by a group of guys with a theatrical sense of irony.  I find such street-food myopia frustrating myself.

But here's where we disagree, SUF. One street food culture has nothing to do with the other, just as the ethnic mom-and-pop eateries in Rockville and Falls Church have nothing to do with the expense-account dining found in downtown D.C. The only thing these food trucks have in common is their ability to roll to different locations.

It seems rather naive to think that middle-class foodies would curb their enthusiasm for new and better street food options just because the suburbs and exurbs in many cities have been a source for amazing Latin snacks for years. Eating is almost always about proximity. After years of suffering through a food-cart scene dominated by dirty water dogs and sodas, downtown D.C. office wonks finally have some decent street options near them. Of course they're going to be excited.

The question is this: Will that excitement translate into a curiosity for food trucks outside these eaters' immediate neighborhoods? Probably not. I don't necessarily subscribe to the rising-tide-lifts-all-boats theory, not in this economy, not when a trip to Montgomery County may require a 30-minute Metro ride and extra coinage.

But perhaps the opposite will occur? Perhaps one or two of the more enterprising pupusa trucks in Maryland will make the move into the District and take advantage of this growing culture? It'd make sense on a number of levels. But mostly it might open some eyes: Once a downtown office worker, after all, tasted Sabor Latino's tacos, they may realize just how mediocre some of the new trucks really are.

If you want Ethiopian cooking, you head to 9th Street NW. If you want Vietnamese, you program your GPS for the Eden Center. But Mexican food? You might as well fly to San Antonio. At least that’s how desperate I sometimes feel when discussing Washington’s south-of-the-border offerings. Seriously, when one of the area’s favorite “Mexican” eateries is Lauriol Plaza, home of the bro polloi, you know you have a problem. Taqueria la Placita is the exception in this lackluster landscape. Owner Javier Martinez brooks no compromise with his Hyattsville taqueria. In true nose-to-tail fashion, La Placita leaves no part of the animal unused. You find gelatinous oreja (ear) tacos, salty cueritos (pig skins), and chewy cecine (salty beef, likely flank or skirt). Martinez also serves up one of the few authentic al pastor tacos in the area—two corn tortillas brimming with marinated pork roasted slowly on a spit, a technique borrowed from Lebanese immigrants who introduced Puebla natives to shawarma in the 1930s. Each taco comes sprinkled with diced onions and chopped cilantro, to which you can add your choice of radish slices, cucumber rounds, a squirt of lime, and one (or both) of the fiery salsas brought to your table. This, in short, is the true Mexican taco experience, right down to the blaring jukebox in the corner.

5020 Edmonston Road, Hyattsville (301) 277-4477