‘Feliz’ Navidad

Having visited its predecessors, La Cantina Feliz in the ’burbs and La Calaca Feliz in the city, we were delighted to see a third Feliz location pop up in Manayunk.

Like the other two locations, Taqueria Feliz has the usual suspects in its Mexican cantina fare, with the range of tacos and guacamole the clear favorites in quality and popularity. So for this visit, we steered away from those standards in favor of items that weren’t available at the other Feliz locations or those that had a different spin.

The shrimp ceviche ($8.95) was deliciously spicy with sweet undertones. The perro caliente was street comfort food in its purest decadent form: a hot dog with refried beans, salsa, chorizo, bacon and pico de gallo. It might sound like overkill, but it was perfectly satisfying in its excessiveness.

On the lighter side of things, the ensalada de jicama ($7.95) was a bounty of fresh flavors, with gala apples and pumpkin seeds giving the salad some great textures.

The Cubana sandwich ($10.95) was a toasty orgy of pork and spicy peppers with carnitas, chorizo and pork belly held together with jack cheese and roasted jalapenos.

But here’s where Taqueria Feliz really separated itself from its older brothers:

There is a section on the menu call “comida loca: funky stuff.” We consider ourselves adventurous, so we ordered a couple things from that section. The lamb-heart skewers ($6.95) were tender, juicy and tasty, resting on a dollop of refried beans, picked onion and cucumber. And that was the hard sell.

For some reason that escapes us now, we could not wait to try the grasshopper tacos ($6.95). We thought … they’re tacos. The chef probably finesses those grasshoppers and throws a bunch of other ingredients in so the result ends up being the best taco ever. It probably tastes like bacon-wrapped-chicken-fried onion rings when you cook it right. We watch “Bizarre Food with Andrew Zimmer.” This is probably a delicacy in Thailand. We got this!

The plate hit the table and … OK, wow! This is just roasted grasshoppers on a tortilla with a sprinkling of onions. The chef really isn’t hiding the fact that you are eating grasshoppers. This has to be good, right? Maybe all you need is a sliver of onion and some salt or paprika and, oh, here’s a wedge of lime (squeeze, squeeze!) to awaken the flavor supernova of awesome that is hidden inside these … insects.

We dug in and took a bite.

It got really quiet at the table after that.

Two crystal-clear revelations became instantly apparent: We have never seen people chew as painfully slow as we were chewing at that moment, and our dumb first-world asses voluntarily ate bugs.

Let’s be clear on this. The dish was not necessarily bad. We’re pretty sure it was not great. It consisted of roasted grasshoppers in a soft tortilla shell. Everything about texture and the flavor screamed grasshoppers: dry and crunchy to the point where we would swear that we could feel each bristly hair on each of their little hindlegs as they raggedly slid down ye olde esophagus. And while we commend the chef for standing behind his protein and not drowning it in salsa, cheese and sour cream … damn!

Needless to say, hindsight is a beast!

But it’s not like somebody tricked us into it. We volunteered for this experience with all the excitement and energy of someone trying to become a contestant on “The Price is Right.” And we are probably stupid enough to do something like this again some other time, some other place. (Tarantula quesadillas? Hells yes! Let’s try it!)

That one funky moment that was completely our fault aside, Taqueria Feliz is a welcome addition to the Feliz family.

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