All tagged mouthfeel

Barbacoa Vicky

Barbacoa Vicky

Adam Goldberg
San José del Cabo

A few miles inland off a recently-paved road lies a concrete white utilitarian building stamped with the logos of Pepsi and Pacifico. The sturdy building is adorned with exposed electric and telephone lines. Despite being wrapped in ten layers of paint, the true age of the restaurant is revealed through hints of peels and flakes. The hot sun of San José -- a place where the sun shines 364 days of the year -- beats down incessantly on the fading pained script logo: "Restaurant Vicky." While the surrounding buildings have been occupied and abandoned over the last thirty years through Baja California Sur's development, like a church, Barbacoa Vicky has held strong. It offers a unique delicacy: the best slow-roasted lamb tacos in town. Barbacoa at Vicky's comes from sheep, slow-roasted underground in hot embers for eight hours. The resulting meat, ordered here by the kilogram, develops a soft and stringy texture intertwined in pockets of juicy fat. The meat is typically rife with moisture and arriving early in the day ensures the juiciest cuts. The fresh corn tortillas -- speckled with coarse grains of yellow corn -- absorb the excess fat, much like spreading butter on cornbread. Wrapped with a splash of lime, a dash of cilantro, and a small dollop of guacamole and the barbacoa taco is ready to go.

Schwartz's Deli

Schwartz's Deli

Adam Goldberg
Montreal

A visit to Montreal would be incomplete without a smoked meat sandwich from Schwartz's. On Saturdays the line -- at times half an hour or more -- can be pretty intimidating, but it's worth it. There are few ways to fight off the Canadian winter as effective as a hot smoked meat sandwich on an icy-cold day. It's time to step into Schwartz's, the tiny but immensly popular deli on Montreal's Boulevard Saint-Laurent. This is undoubtedly the juiciest smoked meat sandwich I've ever tasted. Unlike corned beef, the meat is smoked. It's similar to pastrami but the spice blend is unique. The meat here is so moist I wanted to squeeze out the juice like a sponge dipped in gravy. The smoked meat sandwich, Schwartz's house speciality, is a generous mound of warm meat resting between two fat slices of rye each swiped with a thin layer of French's yellow mustard. The mustard's light acidity and short-lived spice cuts right through the meat's fatty mouthfeel leaving behind a really pleasant texture.