Restaurant Sat Jun 16 2007

John's BBQ Chicken Tacos

Thursday night a friend and I ate at John's Place, on the corner of Racine and Webster. The restaurant bills itself as serving "Regional American Cuisine" so I guess we shouldn't have been surprised to find the BBQ chicken tacos on the menu. Despite the blasphemous addition of sweet and sticky (and very American) BBQ sauce to what is ostensibly a Mexican dish, we couldn't resist giving them a try... and then of course attempting to replicate them in our own kitchen the following night.

But back to the original meal. Along with the tacos (which were served like fajitas, with a dish of warm tortillas alongside the meat), we ordered the vegetable pot stickers and the guacamole. The pot stickers themselves were delicious - lightly fried with a well-spiced filling - but the accompanying "soy-lime dipping sauce" tasted like nothing. The guacamole was also perfectly acceptable if a little too chunky for my taste and composed of more tomato, onion and jalapeño than actual avocado.

As for the BBQ taco experiment we conducted at home, I found the results quite tasty. I have to hand it to John's Place. I'm sure they were not the first restaurant to put BBQ chicken tacos on their menu, and I'm sure others have done them better, but they succeeded in furthering my belief that there isn't much that can't be improved with a little BBQ sauce

— Dana Currier / Comments (0)