La Palapita is a drunk on a street corner. It’s a shabby, over-painted, confusing mess of a structure. The restaurant’s tin shack, tempera painted exterior, looks like it fell from the sky in a transcontinental hurricane. The little Mexican restaurant is a nightmare of Chicago style, haphazard architecture and hidden wonder. Every night, like clockwork, Polish teenagers, people in sweatpants, punks in pick-up trucks, and Mexican couples, come pouring in and out of the multi-colored building searching for tacos. Mexican restaurants are a dime a dozen in Chicago. Chicago is one of the many cities across the United States facing an influx of Mexican immigration. The new immigrants bring with them a host of traditional cultural values and traditions. Some people might think it a stretch to say the taco is a cultural tradition, but those people haven’t had a taco from La Palapita. The taco is the Mexican kanish, or the Latino hot dog. Sold by street vendors and in run down shacks, tacos are a quick fix for mid-day hunger and late night hangovers. When I worked in the food service industry, my Mexican co-workers would stop the world at noon and lay out a taco spread of epic proportions. Whole roasted chicken, stewed goat meat, various chopped up innards, cheeses, cilantro leaves, salsa and fresh corn tortillas were strewn about buffet style. Among the discussions about penis size, prostitutes, and family life, everyone made their own taco and mixed the fresh, sometimes strange, ingredients together. It was a weirdly communal and delicious experience.
La Palapita in Portage Park is part of that Mexican taco tradition. What makes the tacos at La Palapita so wonderful is their simplicity and freshness. Their tacos are served with sautéed meat, cilantro, onion, and Chihuahua cheese on two fresh corn tortillas. No lettuce, no tomato and no guacamole. The simple ingredients meld together for an experience that is as elegant as a cucumber sandwich and as powerful as a menage a trois. Freshness is not something you’d expect at a Mexican taco shack on a dank Chicago street, but that is the strange beauty of La Palapita. It’s a refuge from elitist Mexican restaurants with something to prove, and it adds both danger and cilantro to an otherwise overcrowded taco city.
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