Santo Taco is a newly opened Mexican food eatery located across from the Woodward's complex on East Hastings in Vancouver. As soon as I saw some of their Insta postings, I messaged them to find out if there were vegan or vegan friendly items on their menu. I was assured that there were.
I am almost certainty that I took an outside picture of ST but somehow nothing was available in my photos. I was struggling with the sun and glass reflection on that afternoon so maybe I gave up without realizing it! So my title photo is instead their house made hot sauces.
So there are different kinds of vegan options (I mean, at restaurants in general). First of all , certain cuisines have dishes that are naturally vegan (e.g.. falafel) or a chef may create vegan dishes that are not just adaptations but truly based on the plant kingdom. There are dishes that are adaptations of omnivorous dishes that use substitutes such as faux meats or faux dairy products. Finally there are vegan options that are just the regular menu items (most commonly vegetarian menu items) with the dairy or egg removed and no substations made. That is what vegan options at Santo Taco meant, at least so far. I'm not complaining as we ate some very tasty food but Mexican food (especially the Canadian version) profits from cheese, even vegan cheese.
We started with a Tortas a sandwich made with wonderful house baked bread. There are basically 3 vegetarian fillings to choose from at ST and for this we chose the Hongos, a mushroom mixture with tomatoes, onion, guac, garlic and jalapeno. It made a very nice sandwich!
Next up were a couple of Mulitas, filling between 2 tortillas. For one of these, we chose the Rajas, a poblano pepper mixture with potato, onion, tomato and in this case guac. For the other, it was the Hongos mixture again. Naturally, they make their tortillas in house! Excellent!
Finally, la Taquiza. I apologize for not knowing the plural but we had 2 of these as well. More poblanos on one and for the other, Del Llano, pinto beans, guac, lettuce and pico. So everything we had were variations on themes. Topped with a little lime and some hot sauce and everything was tasty and maybe even a little too healthy.
This is quite a chic space and we enjoyed the soundtrack which was Mexican leaning (I think). Service was also very good and attentive. I did encourage the manager to look into vegan cheese and he assured me that it was on their list to find something that was suitable. It turns out that the extent of my vegan activism is giving restaurant managers a bad time. Really though, the food was good but a little cheese would have made it excellent!
Food 3 1/2 out of 5
Vegan Options 3 1/2 out of 5
Comfort 4 out of 5
Service 4 1/2 out of 5
Value 4 out of 5
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