Got the Memo

From street cart to restaurant and back again, Leo Saavedra is a Mexican master.

by Trey Popp

Neal Santos TRIPLE THREAT: Tacos Don Memo's Leo Saavedra makes some of the best Mexican food in Philly. He's already expanded his lunch cart business into a sit-down restaurant, and he's now in the process of moving into a bigger truck that'll allow him to beef up his street-food menu.

[ review ]

God bless Bobby Flay and his new Burger Palace. Bless the University of Pennsylvania's real estate team for bringing the chain to Walnut Street. Bless the bloggers who've broadcasted its PR puffery. Bless the star-struck students who've abandoned their usual lunch haunts to join the Palace's hourlong ordering lines.

I don't know the true mastermind behind this grand conspiracy, this neighborhood-scale magic trick, but I have a hunch about where he's eating his lunch. Dollars to pesos it's around the corner at Tacos Don Memo, where, for practically the first time in three years, the midday wait for two tacos al pastor has dropped below 5 minutes.

Since Leo Saavedra wheeled this shiny, closet-size cart up to the 38th Street curb in 2007, that wait has more frequently topped the 10-minute mark. Some poor addicts salivate for longer. You see them sitting on the concrete embankment near the 7-Eleven parking lot, or, if they're skinny enough, on the absurd pair of kindergarten-size folding chairs Saavedra deploys next to a couple dairy crates on the sidewalk. (Rather astonishingly, there have been no crumpled chairs to date.)

Saavedra, a native of Guerrero, Mexico, who named his business in honor of his grandfather, sells burritos, tostadas, torta sandwiches and tacos. That list is in ascending order of quality, with the tacos al pastor in pole position. A double-tortilla wrap cradles a griddle-fried dice of spicy pork in which every single morsel seems edged with the perfect crisp. There's a bit of pineapple, a tuft of cilantro, a thorough douse of chipotle salsa as earthy as kiln dust. By the time you squeeze your eighth of a lime on top, the doubled tortilla has become a structural necessity: barely enough insurance against sloppy disintegration that you can still revel in its threat.

This taut $2 package of tightly packed flavors is what Don Memo does far and away the best — better than any other food cart in town, and better than anything else that emerges from this one. The burritos here are flavor-diluted by comparison. The brittle crunch of deep-fried tortillas recommends the tostadas as an occasional departure, especially when the asphalt's shimmering and you really need some crunchy iceberg lettuce to cool you down — in which case, go with the tomatillo salsa, colored like the bright stripes on a watermelon and practically thirst-quenching in its fruity mildness. But the tacos al pastor are what it's all about.

That may change. A few months ago, Saavedra put in his paperwork for permission to operate a bigger truck capable of supporting a broader menu. If he gets it, the business will boast the rare distinction of having boomeranged from food cart, to brick-and-mortar restaurant, and back to an expanded presence on the street. About a year after Don Memo first set up shop at 38th and Sansom streets, it branched out in Upper Darby with a casual BYO a couple of blocks from the 69th Street Transit Station.

The family-style cooking at Don Memo's sit-down location is short on frills, but there are several things to like — including a few that would push the streetside operation, pending expansion, to the next level. There's a superbly rendered poblano mole. If it can rescue the dryish chicken shreds in an Upper Darby trio of enchiladas, it could work wonders in the truck's burritos. The restaurant also offers hefty tamales — studded with far moister chunks of chicken — that would travel well.

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Saavedra would face a stiffer challenge reproducing the restaurant's winning way with fresh masa harina, which is the best justification for trekking out to Upper Darby. I've rarely seen a pile of beef tongue quite so heaping as on a giant huarache, but the simple, pliant substrate emerged as the dish's best feature — superior, in fact, to the actual huaraches at Distrito (their strength lies in more intensely flavored toppings). Better still was a soft pupusa stuffed with just enough cheese to register, but not enough to weigh down a snack whose surprisingly delicate profile made the traditional accompaniment of watery, slightly sour tomato sauce sing.

The restaurant has its weaknesses. Good handmade flour tortillas had no chance of saving a gummy green mess of chicharrones. There are better ways to deploy boiled nopales than as slippery strips in a giant salad dominated by iceberg lettuce. But like the original Don Memo cart, its strengths outshine its shortcomings.

What Tacos Don Memo 3.0 might look like is an open question, but there's every reason to hope Saavedra gets another chance to grow. In the meantime, University City's al pastor contingent can root for the continued popularity of his bigger, beefier neighbor. Bobby Flay, this fine and for-the-moment fast pork taco goes out to you.

(t_popp@citypaper.net)

Tacos Don Memo | 38th and Sansom streets, 610-529-2039. Summer hours Mon.-Sat., 10:30 a.m.-4 p.m.; closed Sun. Tacos, $2; tostadas, $3; tortas, $6; burritos, $6.

Don Memo Mexican Restaurant | 57 Garrett Road, Upper Darby, 610-352-2376. Mon.-Thu., 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 11 a.m.-midnight; Sun., 10:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Appetizers, $2.50-$9.95; entrées, $7.95-$14.95. Delivery available. Wheelchair accessible.