“Eating is really one of your indoor sports. You play three times a day, and it’s well worth while to make the game as pleasant as possible.”
— Dorothy Draper
Taqueria Tepa No. 2 — Mexican Food
Taqueria Tepa No. 2 is one of those small, shopping center restaurants that you can walk by and miss. I know, because I did just that. Had it not been for my accompanying Mexican food expert, Russ Salazar, who said, “You missed the door,” I would probably be buying insurance or something else.
Taqueria Tepa No. 2 is located at 4440 Palmer Drive, Suite 8B, in Cameron Park in the Bel Air shopping center. The restaurant has been there for some years, but the present owner has had it for about five years. The other restaurant, No. 1, is located a 501 Main St., Suite D, in Suisun City. Both appear to be mostly family run.
Although most of the business is to-go, from the traffic I observed, it is a full service restaurant with menus and servers. We found that out when we walked up to the counter and were handed menus and told to find a table. We did and a waiter immediately came over, gave us chips and salsa and took our drink order.
They have two kinds of salsa, basically, with and without cilantro. They have hotter ones in the kitchen and will share them if you ask. The chips were fresh and good.
The menu has nachos, flautas, quesadillas, tortas, tacos, burritos and a list of “house specials” such as a carne asada plate, chicken flautas, steak fajitas, chicken fajitas, shrimp, enchiladas, chiles rellenos, chicken chimichanga and a number of side orders. They also serve breakfast, lunch specials and a “today’s special” board.
Meat choices include carne asada (beef), carnitas (pork), pollo (chicken), chorizo, pastor (barbecued pork) and chile verde (pork).
We decided to order something similar to what we had the week before, a carnitas torta and a regular chile verde burrito. The torta came on a very nice bolillo (football shaped) roll and contained a good serving of carnitas, tomato slices, avocado slices, sour cream, cheese, lettuce and jalapeños. The large number of ripe avocado slices really got my attention and made it deliciously moist.
The regular burrito was very large (they also have a super burrito) and full of big hunks of meat, along with rice, beans and salsa, and quite good. I decided it needed a fork to eat it, it was too full of good stuff to eat by hand. Both of us finished everything on our plates.
For drinks you can select from soda (canned, fountain and Mexican), horchata, and imported and domestic beer.
Taqueria Tepa No. 2 is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. and can be reached at 530-672-1549. If you follow ratings on the Internet, UrbanSpoon gave them a 90 percent rating.