ROSCOE VILLAGE — Titus Ruscitti didn't realize every city didn't have great Mexican food until he moved away from Chicago for college.
Now he's not letting the city's great cuisine fly under the radar.
"There’s no Chicago authority on tacos," said Ruscitti, who grew up in Lincoln Park. "In cities like Austin, L.A., they all have taco experts that everyone looks to."
"I just decided to anoint myself," he laughed.
Ruscitti's taco tour began when he started tweeting pictures of the taco joints he was visiting at @TweetsofTacos.
But he wanted to collect his notes and photos in a more cohesive database, so The Chicago Taco Tour began in December 2013.
Ruscitti, 32, shies away from big-name restaurants, as he knows they'll rack up professional reviews quickly. He searches for small, mom-and-pop taco spots more likely to be new to his readers.
Kyla Gardner says Ruscitti orders the first thing on the menu:
His day job takes him all around the suburbs — he declined to have his photo taken or reveal his day job — and on his way back home to Ukrainian Village, he meanders down side roads to find tacos.
His favorite is the carne asada taco at Taqueria El Asadero, 2213 W. Montrose Ave. in North Center. Another standout is Loncar's Liquors, 3201 E. 92nd St. in South Chicago, which has deep-fried tacos on Wednesdays.
He appreciates a homemade tortilla, and ingredients or meats that set a taco apart from standard menus. In visiting more than 300 taco shops in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs (more than 175 have been put on the blog so far), he's learned that the house's best taco is usually the first listed on the menu.
"Each taqueria has at least one taco they do well, you just have to know which one," he said.
Even if that one isn't so great, Ruscitti doesn't say it overtly.
For many of the mom-and-pop places, it's their "first taste of Google," so Ruscitti doesn't want to put a negative review out — but regular readers can tell when he's not impressed.
The Chicago Taco Tour isn't Ruscitti's first food blog.
Ruscitti briefly ran an Italian beef one called "What's Your Beef," but ran out of places to sample.
For seven years, he's been running "Smokin' Chokin' and Chowing," which isn't limited to one type of meal to review.
In addition to eating at two to three new taco spots per week and regularly updating "Smokin'," which features a lot of barbecue, burgers and sandwiches, it's a lot in sum, even for someone as passionate about a good meal as Ruscitti.
"Just thinking about it makes my heart almost stop," he said. "Because I don't do salad tours."
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