Tag: taco
A spicy and simply delicious way to start your day
After eating one of these the other morning, I was reminded that, to my biased palate, this Texas breakfast taco at the Roadhouse is one of the tastiest foods you’ll find in the ZCoB! I could happily eat a couple a day!
It’s one of a trio of different Texas breakfast tacos on the Roadhouse menu right now during the week. A warm flour tortilla, filled with freshly scrambled eggs, dressed up with some freshly grated Monterey Jack cheese and a bit of that zesty IASA Peperoncino from Italy.
What makes it so good? Like so many things we make here, each of the ingredients is lovely on its own, and then they all come together in a singular, super tasty way. The Monterey Jack might be one of the more underappreciated of the exceptional ingredients we work with. We’ve been buying it from Vella Cheese in Sonoma—just a couple miles from Sam Keen’s house for over 30 years. While probably thousands of dairies make Monterey Jack, to my knowledge, only TWO make it using old-school artisan methods. The cost, of course, is far higher, but the result is radically more flavorful. The Roadhouse probably pays 20 times more to get the Vella Cheese than it would to get some standard commercial offering, but man, is it good. At every level, our determination and dedication to this special cheese, I believe, is one of the many ways we turn our food philosophy into real-life values.
From the time we started buying the cheese in the late ’80s until he passed away a bit over a decade ago, Vella Cheese, for me, was almost synonymous with the man who ran it. Ignazio (Ig) Vella was an amazing supplier with whom we shared so many guiding principles. Now that I think about it, in Sam Keen’s context, Ig was very much an insightful if informal philosopher of what we could call “the world of curd.”
Writing for the Los Angeles Times, journalist Valerie J. Nelson described Ig as:
The elder statesman of artisanal cheeses … He was a gruff straight shooter, and the salvo was his way of warning that success required a willingness to toil for uncertain financial gain. Once that caveat was spelled out, Vella invariably became an unselfish teacher and tireless advocate for small-scale producers of cheese, according to those in the industry.
I would agree. To me, he was also a friend and mentor. Ig passed away in the spring of 2011 at the age of 82. In reflecting on his life and work, I find a kind of spiritual calling—a reminder that dedication, integrity, and craftsmanship matter. A reminder that when we do our work well—honoring our values and staying true to the hard-working, down-to-earth, community-conscious commitment to quality that Ig embodied—special things are very likely to emerge. In that sense, each of these tacos is more than just food—it’s a testament to the values that Ig Vella lived by his whole life.
The IASA Peperoncino is what really takes this taco to a special place. It comes from Italy, where Ig’s father, Tom Vella, was born. IASA is an outstanding “spread” of spicy red peppers in olive oil. At our house, we buy quart jars and use it nearly every day! At the Roadhouse, it’s already appeared on a number of specials. It’s also on the menu as an optional condiment and as a part of the Bakehouse artisan bread appetizer. The eggs, the creaminess of the cheese, and the umami-spice of the IASA all come together on the taco to make for what I think is a wonderful way to start your day.
If you like a bit of spice, you’ll love it. Swing by the Roadhouse during the week for breakfast, order a cup of that really good Roadhouse Joe coffee, and get your day off to a solidly delicious start!