Victoria's Hidden Gem - Taco Fino

Upon my cousin's first visit to Vancouver from NYC, I brought him to our capital city, Victoria. I haven't visited Victoria myself for couple years now, and I was so surprised to find sooooo many shops in downtown Victoria are closed. Maybe we went on a weekday, but downtown seemed a lot less busy than it used to be. There were lease signs after lease signs along the downtown streets, what happened ? The city itself is still beautiful as always, though.

Good thing is, I also noticed many new cafes/restaurants - most are similar to those bohemian hipster style cafes we find on Main st. of Vancouver. It was lunch time, and we got attracted to this little shop called Taco Fino. While doing some research before writing this post, I found that they actually have a couple locations including a store and a truck in Vancouver ! How did I not know of this gem ! And to our luck, it was just opened around Oct. 15th in downtown Victoria. This successful business is once again originated from a truck in Tofino. I'm a big fan of successful food truck stories. Oh, and I heard they are opening a big store in Gastown soon ! I can't wait :D

As you can see, the interior is as appealing as the outside. Again, I love love love wooden furniture - and they have these long wooden shared tables for customers to have a casual, engaging dine-in experience. I'm also a big fan of quick-service restaurants. I guess starting a business myself really made me look into and appreciate every detail of other business' operations.

TacoFino has this giant chalk board as their menu. I like chalk board menus too, the only thing that goes between me and a chalk board menu is my ugly hand writing :*(

We were told that the portions were small and we should order around 2 items per person. We were both not too hungry at that moment, so we each picked one. I went for the beef taco, and my cousin, the tuna.

At the cashier counter where you pay for your food as you order, there sits this ice bucket of bottled soda drinks. I don't usually order soda beverages with my food or drink it anywhere (cold-pressed juices ftw!) , but these vintage looking bottled sodas were just so irresistible. I guess this judge a book by its cover thing runs in the family, so we both got one just for its look.

Isn't it pretty though ?  I also honestly think my picture taking skills have improved thanks to my effort to blog with tons of pictures. Yeayeayea, it may still look ugly to professional eyes, but improvement from the past self is what's more important right ! :D

Tuna Taco

Beef Taco

I can't really recall how the Tuna one tasted like because I only got one bite from my cousin. I remember it was good though. But my beef one was amazing, so of course he only got one bite from me too. This beef taco was seriously the best I've ever had, I know I have a tendency to exaggerate, but this time it's true ! I don't even know how to describe how delicious it was, so I have to speak in my mother tongue (Singlish), it was seriously good until don't know what.

I'm truly glad that I found this in Victoria because I usually wouldn't know what to eat when I'm there. And now that I know there are multiple locations in Vancouver as well, I'll soon become a regular :)