It has always been confusing to me that there is great Mexican food in San Diego, and great Mexican food in San Francisco, yet how both styles can be totally different, I never quite understood. Minor differences in tortillas, beans, bread, and meat preparation make all the difference. Sometimes menu items in one area look nothing like what you get elsewhere. I’ve been searching for rolled tacos for so long that I thought I would never see them again outside of San Diego. With the recent discovery of an Adalberto’s in NorCal, I realized that worlds were colliding.

Just as San Jose seems to be some weird way station in-between Southern and Northern California, Super Taqueria acts as a bridge between the two Mexican food styles. We walk in and are greeted with all the familiarities one comes to expect from California taquerias. The menu is dotted with all the essentials, but it is the rolled tacos that, as always, grab my attention. Could they be what I have longed for?

Nah. The rolled tacos weren’t anything special to my SoCal tastes. In fact, they were more like flautas. Still, I couldn’t complain; they were delicious. If I had grown up in San Jose, I probably would have craved them every night of the week. However, the tender meat could not compensate for the odd, puréed guacamole and the sin of flour tortillas. Next up was a bean and cheese burrito. Now that, that was delicious. So good, in fact, I got one to bring home. Good ratio of beans to cheese, and it served as a perfect canvas to test out the hot sauces; all of which were excellent and worth exploring.

Cory, Forest and Mikel, the regular Burritowingers that they are, knew well enough to delve deeper into the menu. The Super Taco was the clear winner. Just look at the picture.

Hunks of avocado, piles of meat, melted cheese, cilantro, onions and covered in hot sauce. Clearly the thing to get. Not much of a surprise considering the name of the restaurant.

With locations not only in San Jose, but also in Watsonville, Salinas, Gilroy, Morgan Hill, and Hollister, Super Taqueria is a chain in more ways than one. Something has to connect the great Mexican food from the upper and lower parts of this state. Perhaps less migration than evolution, San Jose and parts south have a style of their own. Super Taqueria populates this region, not only as the missing link, but with a style that is happily its own.