January 7, 2022 – One day I ran into an old elementary school peer at one of my favorite taco shops, Taquería Zarape on Fremont in Seaside.
We exchanged greetings. He mentioned he’d been following my food reporting—and then grinned like I do between bites of Zarape’s bacon-carnitas torta.
“You love everything!” he said with a hyena laugh.
He didn’t mean it as a compliment. He wanted me to trash more marginal places.
It was fair feedback, and something I hear from time to time. It also gets at a key part of my reporting strategy. For years, I’ve made a conscious decision to celebrate the better flavors, creators and actors in our epicurean community. An attentive reader will notice that involves pointing out both why a place is worth visiting and what to avoid, but rarely buries an establishment.
I leave my shovel in the shed for two reasons: 1) With limited time, space and energy to cover a vast swath of California’s most verdant food territory, I want to be selective with my attention—and there are so many outstanding spots to celebrate, there just isn’t bandwidth to waste; 2) Iffy places bury themselves soon enough.
That also motivated my pitch for this Found Treasures column at the start of the last year: I wanted to spotlight the best menu items, hospitality people and delicious destinations—brand new and established alike—that are often hiding under our noses, ready to steal our hearts.
No time wasted on the mediocre, by design.
A year in, the Found Treasures adventure has meant plant-based hot dawgs and “California chorizo”, a tiny Korean market’s hot Friday lunches and a falafel wrap the size of a football.
It’s meant missions to secret pop-up kitchens by moonlight and Brooklyn’s finest pizza spots with a Pizza World Cup legend, and treks to an abalone capital and the first sake brewery in the United States, both tucked in our backyard.
It’s meant Cajun blackened chicken sandwiches, atypical fish tacos, and surf shack nirvana on a cliff in Santa Cruz.
It’s meant restaurant programs designed to help you live longer, probiotic “mylkshakes,” vegan Venezuelan arepasand loaded life-affirming acai bowls.
But it’s also meant over-the-top bacon, glorious greasy quesadillas, indulgent dumplings and a chef whose kitchen career almost killed him.
And it’s meant organic hemp vodka, video game craft beer, and rare English-style ales to wash it all down.
It’s also meant the most popular online EMB story of the year, by a long shot, as I discussed with last week’s column, “Your Most Read Stories of 2021.”
But back to El Zarape in Seaside. Zarape’s carnitas-bacon torta is worthy of a Found Treasure itself.
You won’t find it on the menu, but they’ll make it to order.
I’ll take Zarape’s carnitas against anyone’s—it’s textured, flavorful, juicy, tender and gently crisped—but I won’t take home the recipe, as they’re not talking trade secrets. I think it might be prepped with a splash of Dr. Pepper or Coca Cola, but whatever the case it is a masterful title contender in a very competitive category.
They won’t spill intel on the soy-butter proprietary treatment they simmer fish or shrimp with, either. The fish and shrimp tacos represent signature dishes themselves, and are good enough to eat twice a week, as I did when they first opened and I was working next door.
My go-to eventually became the big bean and cheese burrito; I order it easy on the rice, big on the beans, with avocado. Another burrito to note: the “turbo” that combines fish and shrimp.
The perpetually fresh-fried chips and multidimensional salsa bar—starring spicy pickled carrots and banging pico de gallo—is completely outstanding and completely complementary, as Dios intended.
The real coup for meat friendly folk, though, might be the carne en su jugo soup, which translates to “meat in its juice.”
A combination of carne asada, bacon, avocado, onion and cilantro prove as savory as it sounds, and the broth is carnivore nectar.
An old colleague described it more succinctly: “Liquid bacon.”
Buen provecho.
Taquería Zarape • 1107 Fremont Blvd., Seaside
About the author
Mark C. Anderson, Edible Monterey Bay's managing editor, appears on "Friday Found Treasures" via KRML 94.7 every week, a little after 12pm noon. Reach him via mark@ediblemontereybay.com.
