BARTACO
Overall rating: 1 of 4 stars
Food: Tacos, small plates, booze. Lotta booze
Service: attentive, and the kitchen is fast
Best dishes: Rotisserie chicken, grilled corn, spiced chocolate pudding
Vegetarian selections: quite a few
Price range: $-$$
Credit cards: all major credit cards
Hours: 11:30 a.m.-late, daily
Children: fine for lunch and early dinner
Parking: valet
Reservations: call-ahead seating available
Wheelchair access: yes
Smoking: no
Noise level: high volume
Patio: yes
Takeout: yes
Address, phone: 969 Marietta St., Atlanta. 404-607-8226
Website: bartaco.com
Consider the taco. It comes in a shell, right? You crisp it in the oven then fill it at the table with ground beef, cheddar cheese, iceberg lettuce and few dribbles of red sauce.
No, no. Banish that thought. A true Mexican street taco starts with small, soft corn tortillas, doubled up because they are so fall-apart tender. Add a hillock of grilled or braised meat, a fine dice of onion, chopped cilantro and a dollop of salsa. Fold and inhale, muy sabroso.
Or is there a third way? Perhaps you start with a flour rather than corn tortilla. Then you pile it with nuggets of hot fried fish, drippy slaw, creamy dressing and a squirt of lime for good measure. Recipe for a mess? No way: That warm tortilla stretches and holds in its contents as snug as a baby in a sling.
Talk about a bundle of joy. Each kind of taco has its own ideal, a package of good things all the better for coming together. You fold it, lift it, dip your head. It works like a special delivery of succulent fillings, a vehicle in motion, and the tortilla its chassis.
I would like to show some enthusiasm for the signature dish at Bartaco, a bumping and cannily designed restaurant that has brought considerable life and joie de vivre to the westside since its July opening. But I can’t. Bartaco has its charms, but it does not give good taco.
This newcomer comes from the Connecticut-based restaurant group that brought us Inman Park’s Barcelona, and it is the fifth iteration of a concept that has served the company well in the Northeast.
That may explain the hard-core Yankee vibe. With its white and marine blue wood paneling, striped booth cushions and easy blurring of space between the bar-dominated inside and outdoor patio, everything about this place says beach party in the Hamptons. It is almost like the restaurant equivalent of Abercrombie & Fitch, and I would not be surprised if an oversized sepia-toned photo of a shirtless model were to appear on a wall.
Like that shop, the look says rich but the prices don’t. Since you are at the virtual beach, you’ll want to slip on your shades and sit out on the whitewashed patio. There are heaters and blankets to combat autumn chill, though I might smell the blankets for salsa.
When you want to order, you tick off your desired items on a chit and place a menu card in the stand on your table. You can order piecemeal, and the food comes out of the kitchen lickety-split.
So, those tacos …
They do sound good, and I tried to warm to them on each of three visits. Some try to approximate Mexican street tacos, with shreds of chicken or crumbles of chorizo topped with a bit of onion and cilantro. Others get creative and sport (pretty juiceless) fried oysters, hunks of sesame ribeye or odd little falafels shaped like Tootsie Rolls. All are undone by their too-sturdy corn tortillas that have neither the flake-apart texture nor the intoxicating smell of fresh masa. After eating one taco and making it partway into the second, we usually give up and pick the fillings out of the third.
Guacamole service is also a wash in my book. It arrives smooth and sour as a lime, with neither the bristle of onion and fresh chile nor the buttery flavor of a just-mashed avocado. Tostada shells come in lieu of chips, which just seems a little loco.
But you can drink and nibble well if you hit the menu’s sweet spots. There’s nothing wrong and quite a lot right with the house mojito, as well as a seasonal caipirinha goosed with orange and a bare dash of elderflower liqueur.
You can nosh on a tangy chopped salad and a sloppy but easy-to-love ear of street corn rolled in mayonnaise, cojita cheese and red chile. A half rotisserie chicken is tender and well seasoned, and a steal at $8. You can order that, a salad and a cup of ripe cubed pineapple with lime for dessert. I admire a restaurant that threads sensible eating options throughout its menu. (That said, get the spiced chocolate pudding, a canning jar filled with pure, creamy pleasure.)
But know the disappointments will keep coming. Hard and mealy fried plantains. Spongy fried balls that call themselves gorditas. A dry mushroom tamale.
But the food is cheap, the drinks good, and you’ll like sitting at that bar or on that patio so much you’ll figure out a way to make Bartaco work for you.
