Here’s the menu and place setting… you can see they serve a small bowl of fried spiced chickpeas which are very crunchy and tasty.

We started with an appetizer of the Totopos con Chile (tortilla chips, salsa de arbol, cotija cheese, onions, cilantro, crema and lime). The chips are coated in the salsa (which is extremely spicy) – it’s the closest equivalent to nachos meets chilaquiles.  I enjoyed the totopos very much, and couldn’t stop eating them despite being so spicy my eyes were watering and my face was red and hot and my mouth was on fire.

Here are the carnitas! I ordered this dish because it got amazing reviews and I wanted to see what all the hype was about.  As you can see it’s quite a large piece of meat, served with coleslaw and hot sauce.  This is the menu description: Braised pork, orange, bay leaf, milk, cinnamon, beer Cabbage salad, pickled jalapeño and salsa de tomatillo.  The dish is also served with a few hot tortillas.

Here’s a closeup!

The meat is tender and juicy with some charred bits that are super tasty.  I ended up making mini tacos with the meat, tortillas and slaw (“cabbage salad”)… I had to order a second order of tortillas and ate a total of about 5. Yummers!

When the check came they brought little mexican cookies – kind of nutty with powdered sugar on top.

That’s it!  Have you been to Nopalito? What did you think?

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I started off with Tamarindo’s daily aqua fresca – it was cucumber melon. The most amazing cucumber melon aqua fresca I’ve ever had… you could taste the freshness of the cucumbers and the sweetness of the melons… AMAZING…!! (I had 2)

Since “antojeria” means “place of little cravings” you can simply say it’s Mexican tapas. We ordered a bunch of different things, starting with (above) the sopecitos. OMG I’m freaking out right now, these aren’t on the online menu, I wonder if they took them off?! Anyhow, I can’t tell you offically what’s on them, but I can try to remember…. There were 3 different ones. the first one was vegetarian and had potatoes, spices, onion and cotija cheese, the second one had chicken asada and the third had carne asada, all topped with some onion and cotija. These little puppies were amazing!! The mini sopas are all warm, and the sopa itself is warm a little crispy on the bottom. The carne asade one was really really spicy…

Next we have the chilequiles. What are Chilequiles you ask? Well, at this place, they are heaven meets my last meal in jail. They are not nachos — basically they are tortilla chips, tossed in chipotle puree and topped with cotija (white cheese) and cilantro. At some other taquerias the chips come doused in red sauce, but not at Tamarindo. First of all, the chips are the thick, crunchy homemade kind. They are awesome because they’re the kind that stay crunchy through the meal… no sogginess here! And even though the chips are covered in sauce and cheese and the outsie might get a little soggy, the inside is still crunchy! If you go to Tamarindo, you HAVE to get this dish. In the time we were eating dinner, I think almost every table had a plate of them – they looked so good coming out of the kitchen that everyone started ordering it!!

This is the rice and plantains side dish. Now, words can’t really describe how delicious this side dish is. I could probably eat 2 or 3 of them as my meal. The rice was special. It wasn’t just a scoop of regular white rice. They definitely cook it with spices and maybe some coconut milk or something sweet, because it is a light, slightly salty sweet rice. The plantains were soft and warm, and very plantain-like… nothing over the top there… it was the rice that really sent this dish over the edge.

Here is the Sopa Azteca. This wasn’t one of my choices but I tasted it and took a pic anyway. This is one of the vegetarian options. It’s a chili puree soup and has chunks of cheese and avocado in it. It’s spicy and has a very rich and spicy flavor… spicy in the heavy, smokey way.

Lastly, some nachos and guacamole. I was still hungry so I ordered this, and boy was it good!! I think it’s the chips that finally did me in — after I ate half a plate of those chilequiles and then an order of nachos… The chips are the addictive kind, the kind that are buttery, salty and super crunchy – the kind when you eat one, you need to eat another and another and it snowballs until you’re left swiping the crumbs up with your finger to eat them too. The guacamole was really good – the mushy sweet kind with chunks of diced tomato and sprinkled with white cheese.

Tamarindo definitely gets a slam dunk for this meal, thanks to the chilequiles, the rice and plantains and the chips. Woo hoo!!

Tamarindo Antojeria
468 8th St
(between Broadway & Washington St)
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 444-1944
www.tamarindoantojeria.com

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