Last week, I asked for suggestions for some places we could go to eat for this review, and, while there were many great suggestions, I ended up going somewhere that wasn’t suggested. We needed to go to a few places in the Hamilton Place area, so we decided to go to Taco Roc…we’d been wanting to go there for a while. We’ve heard many wonderful things about Taco Roc for several years, but after we heard that they were owned by the same people who own Delia’s, we knew we had to go!
When we arrived, there were only a couple of other tables filled…but, hey, it was not even 11:30 in the morning, so no surprise there! Sure enough, the menu was the same menu from both Delia’s locations. Unlike the sit-down Delia’s in Dayton, you don’t place your order at your table…you walk up to the counter and order, then they give you a number and bring the food to your table. There is a drink fountain (we got water, of course) and you can also order beer, a bottled Mexican soda (those things are GOOOOD if you’ve never had one!), and there were a couple of homemade-looking beverages in large beverage dispensers behind the counter. One was white, one was orange, and I wish that I had asked what they were…but I didn’t. There is also a little condiment bar with a few types of salsa (salsa verde, some sort of roasted tomato salsa, and a red, presumably hot sauce), shredded cheese, sliced jalapenos, some sort of whole pepper, cilantro, and a few other things.
I decided to order the flautas. I’ve seen them on the menu at Delia’s and wanted to try them, but since we always have to bring it home and flautas are deep-fried, I wasn’t too sure they would taste great once I got them home. I decided to have mine with steak (the other options were chicken or a mix with steak, chicken, and shrimp). Anyway, flautas are meat and cheese rolled into a flour tortilla and deep fried, then halved and topped with pico de gallo and queso fresco. The flautas were served on a bed of lettuce with a chipotle cream sauce. The steak at Taco Roc is seasoned and grilled perfectly. The cheese fried in the flautas was nice and melty, gooey, and stringy. I love queso fresco, which is very similar to feta. The chipotle cream sauce was quite delish, but a little spicy for my wimpy taste buds, so I didn’t eat a lot of it. I really liked the pico de gallo. It’s interesting, I hate raw onions but they don’t bother me in pico! This was a great dish, and I ate 3 of the 4 pieces of it!
Philip decided to order the tacos platter with Mexican sausage (chorizo). The menu says that the tacos platter comes with ground beef or chicken, but the cashier told Philip that he could choose any meat that he wanted. He has tried the steak and the barbacoa (shredded beef) and liked both of them, but he loves their chorizo. He decided to have them with flour tortillas. The tacos were what I would almost call overstuffed. Philip couldn’t finish them because they were so full of chorizo! He loved the beans, which, as I have mentioned before, are very fresh with no nasty skin on top. The rice was good too, but unlike Delia’s rice it had peas in it. I guess each location has its own approach! Anyway, we were both completely stuffed once we were finished.
The only (sort of) negative thing I can say about Taco Roc is that their chips were not quite as fresh as the ones we’ve had at Delia’s. They definitely weren’t bad, but at Delia’s they always taste like they were just fried. These tasted like they had been fried, I don’t know, maybe the day before or first thing in the morning. Oh well….we still ate them all!
So, we have completed the trifecta. Delia’s Soddy-Daisy, Delia’s Dayton, and Taco Roc. So far, the three best Mexican restaurants we’ve been to! I strongly urge you to try them-all of them!
Taco Roc is located at 6960 Lee Highway, Chattanooga, TN 37421. You can reach them at 423-653-1001. You can find them online at http://eltacoroc.com or on Facebook. They are open from 10-9 Monday through Saturday and 10-8 Sunday.
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