I always kind of dread going to HP Pavilion events because I am beyond a San Jose food noob, and I never know where to eat after. The majority of the time I end up hitting like the Foster City Denny's @ midnight on my way back to SF. While that is always fun, I like to try new places and experience the local scene. This time, I decided to take advantage of the Foodies @ EAHQ list, and get some advice. Surprisingly, I only got two responses and both recommended the same place: La Victoria Taqueria. Sold.
After checking the Yelp reviews, I was a bit worried because everyone claimed the special "orange" sauce was to die for, and that without it the food was not particularly memorable. I tend to not like orange stuff (baked goods, chocolate, etc)... but I mentally committed to it anyways. James and I rolled up around 11 after the Sharks game. We were both pretty starving because the match had gotten intense in the last period and ended in a shootout! I was immediately excited by "la vic" because of the awesome building it was in. It looked like a little freestanding (Victorian?) SF row house :)
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| burrito explosion! |
The inside is small, and we were definitely way older seeming than the rest of the SJSU crowd. It wasn't too busy though so we easily got a table to wait for our food. And then we waited... and waited. At first we thought that all of the orders being fulfilled were "to-go," but then after about 10 mins we noticed people who came in after us eating their burritos? It was really hard to understand the woman calling out the order numbers, but we figured out they were on 23 when we held a 10 :P. Finally a worker noticed our disgruntlement and wandered up to ask us what we had ordered. I was a bit annoyed, but then they brought us some chips and salsa to tide us over, so I gave them a semi-pass. The chips were pretty non-descript corn, and the salsa was nothing amazing... so my waiting annoyance re surged.
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| orange sauce |
Finally our food came! We both got burritos with pretty typical taqueria fillings. They let you take one bottle of their acclaimed orange sauce to your table, and you are able to purchase more for $6 to take home. I doused my first bite with it, and it was pretty tasty :). I actually couldn't use that much for the rest of the burrito because I'm so anti orange... but I can appreciate that it is objectively delicious. James seemed to really enjoy his. The burrito was pretty filling and I ended up kind of ripping mine apart at the end and making a huge-giant mess of myself. I'm always the most fun person to take to public restaurants
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| security detail?? |
The one thing I thought was hilarious was that there were two security guards posted at the door?? I'm not sure if it's to keep the constant flow of drunk students at bay or whether the Yelp reviews claiming it's to protect the orange sauce are true.... but it was pretty bizarre to see at a little taqueria. Oh! and one super lame thing: they freaking charge for refills on fountain drinks!!! WTF >: |
