when you want, where you want.
Delivery Tacos That Are Actually Fantastic
Photo: Courtesy of Barbaco Tio
In Mexico, barbacoa typically cooks overnight in wood-burning pits so that it’s ready in time for breakfast on weekend mornings. In New York, the hungry and hungover usually have to wait until at least 11 a.m., when the nearest taco truck opens. Barbaco Tío, which opened just over a month ago in Park Slope, keeps hours that are closer to CDMX than most, serving barbacoa and consommé starting at 9 a.m. on weekends and 10 a.m. Wednesday through Friday.
It didn’t take long until local Spanish TikTok heard about the new spot, with one clip emphasizing the fact that the lamb barbacoa is sold by the kilo — not by the pound — “como en Mexico.” Now, weekend mornings are buzzing with customers coming from Queens and New Jersey for the full spread. The action begins in a tented foyer filled with heat lamps and steam tables. Some customers get their meat chopped and weighed for takeout here. Others grab a quick taco and sit at one of the tables. And yet others pass this all together and head into the restaurant, which offers table service.
Wherever it’s eaten, the barbacoa comes with a stack of fresh tortillas, salsa, cilantro, onions, and rajas and nopales made on-site. In addition to the namesake, Barbaco Tío offers pancita — spiced lamb offal cooked in the stomach — beef cabeza, and shredded chicken. There is no fire pit in the back, but the meat, which comes from a halal butcher in New Jersey, is wrapped in maguey leaves and steamed overnight. Barbacoa, chorizo-spiced pancita, and cabeza cook in the same pot, chicken in another, with the consommé harvested from the drippings. The technique comes by way of South Philly Barbacoa, which was co-founded by a friend of Tío’s owner, Mark Allan. The two are not officially connected, but the South Philly founder, Ben Miller, consulted on Tío and connected the new spot with one of his former chefs.
In addition to the slow-cooked meat, Barbaco Tío nixtamalizes and grinds corn to make its own masa, which is used in the rustic tortillas, Frito-thick chips, and jumbo, pillow-soft tamales. For dessert: gently sweet masa cookies, plain or dotted with cacao nibs, which are more reminiscent of cornbread than Tate’s. (The restaurant inherited an ice-cream machine with the space and is planning to soon offer ice-cream sandwiches with those masa cookies, too.)
For Park Slope, the arrival of the restaurant is a true boon. Surprisingly, that’s also true for anyone who lives near, but not inside, the neighborhood’s borders because Barbaco Tío excels at delivery. Even under the best of circumstances, any taco starts to lose its magic the moment it leaves its taquero’s hands: The warm tortilla cools and stiffens; the steaming meat begins to chill; crisp toppings and bright salsas lose their edge. Tío eliminates these problems by turning its delivery options into a taco kit: meat and tortillas each packed into their own insulated bags, a quart of consommé and containers of various condiments and toppings. For those who are not metric-system-minded, a half-kilo of meat comes with 12 tortillas (heat them with a quick steam for the best results), which the restaurant says will feed two to three people. In my case, it fed me, with enough left over for another day. So here is my new advice: Order a kit before you go out for the night, then congratulate yourself when it’s waiting for you the next morning, or afternoon.
Photo: Courtesy of Barbaco Tio
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