Stop Taking Tourists to ‘Street Tacos Behind the Church’

A week or so before my trip to Guadalajara for Chuck’s wedding, one of my friends who doesn’t drink beer called to ask what I planned to do about the bachelor party.

“Suffer it,” I said.

I’m not really a fan of bachelor parties. If you’re in your 20s or early 30s, sure. But Chuck is in his 40s. If bachelorhood was anything great after all this time, why would he be getting married? There should be an age limit on bachelor parties. You don’t see bachelor parties with graybeards or white hair, so there is an effective age limit in practice. We should make it explicit. And I don’t want to go no matter how old the groom is.

But Chuck’s an old friend and I felt obliged. It would suck for my wife to be on her own, but maybe she could tag along with the Mexican bride’s gang of bridesmaids for the bachelorette party.

“No,” my friend who doesn’t drink beer disagreed. “This may be a temptation to drink. You shouldn’t put yourself in that situation. I’m not going near it.”

I wasn’t ready to go that far, but it was an empowering idea: I don’t even have to go!

My only red line was that I wouldn’t go to the ho house. I planned to cut out when that time came, hopefully not too late. I’m an old hand at the Irish goodbye. It comes naturally. And effortless.

Then I learned that the bachelor party would be in Tequila, a small town an hour outside of the city. The bachelor party was hiring a bus, and transportation for two would be a little inconvenient, but no big deal. More importantly, visiting Tequila is a top thing to do in Guadalajara.

We only had five days in Guadalajara, and I didn’t want to go to Tequila twice. The bachelor party wouldn’t leave the city until the locals finished their jobs around 5 p.m. That means we wouldn’t even get there until 7 p.m.

With the wedding agenda and my itinerary, I decided to go to Tequila early, spend the day being a tourist and meet the bachelor party when they arrived. My plan was to meet them for dinner, buy a round or three, make a bit of a scene, maybe embarrass Chuck with some tapatias … and then disappear … hopefully before midnight.

We took a morning bus into Tequila and saw the town, the museum and the Jose Cuervo tour. We had snacks on the bus, but not a proper lunch. Around 4 p.m. we were tired and hungry. I decided to check out the restaurant options.

Veteran tip: In pueblos, the best restaurant is always facing the main plaza. There is the main church, city hall and the best restaurant in town. There may be more businesses or establishments facing the plaza, but there are always those three.

In Tequila I learned that the best restaurants were La Antigua Casona (owned by Jose Cuervo) and La Fonda Cholula (affiliated with the famous hot sauce brand, of which Jose Cuervo was an early investor).

La Casona is an air-conditioned, high-end place where the top 1% would feel most comfortable in Tequila. The menu was a mix of classic fare and gourmet inventions. La Fonda Cholula had a more authentic vibe (cowboy decor and obnoxiously loud mariachis) with traditional fare.

I thought that while either of these restaurants would be a good spot for the bachelor party, neither was primarily a drinking spot. They were more about the food. Off the plaza (not facing) were some nice bars that served what looked like good-enough food while accommodating heavy drinking. I assumed Chuck would have one of those picked out, so I texted the group chain.

“Yo! We are on the ground in Tequila. Where are we having dinner? I’ve have a table for 12 ready when you arrive.”

The response, “We’re probably going for street tacos behind the church.”

Still starving and tired, I decided we wouldn’t wait up. We got a table at La Casona, where we had a lovely soup and appetizer. Then we moved to La Fonda, where I ordered the best chamorro I had in all of Jalisco. We had finished and paid by the time the bachelor party arrived. They beelined to the bar kiosks in the plaza for cocktails in plastic cups or, if they had taste, the clay mugs that double as souvenirs.

When they said “street tacos behind the church,” I thought they were referring to a building with a decent-sized food court of dozen independent mom-and-pop food stalls surrounding tables that would seat over 100. I was horrified when I saw they meant the taco carts in the pedestrian alley behind the church.

This was the filthiest space in all of Tequila. Mangy dogs laid around, exhausted. Maybe a wino or two sprawled unconscious. Grime stained the concrete black. I remember thinking later that if I had to take a shit, but there were no toilets and I was not allowed to wander into the desert … if I had to squat somewhere in town, then this little area behind the church would be the best spot.

A couple taco carts had stools to sit on, but our group opted for a cart with no seating. They queued up to receive their meals in their hands and ate standing up. They put their drinks on the ground, one was accidentally kicked over.

My wife and I were still tired from walking around the town all day, including a museum and distillery tour, with only a brief respite for dinner. Now we stood waiting for the clown car to eat their street tacos behind the church, which is the best spot in Tequila to take a shit if you can’t get a toilet.

I offered to line up a table for the bar. I asked around where we were going from here. A Mexican bachelor bro told me the name of a local bar we’d be going to next. I told him I’d have a table ready for them, and he graciously thanked me. The wife and I walked away and into the plaza. I pulled up Google Maps and searched for the name I was given.

Before I was out of the plaza — the nice part where I wouldn’t take a shit if I had to take a shit somewhere — I saw there was no result for that specific name. But there was a result that was clearly the place he was referring to given it was in the direction he indicated, but its Google title was something like “TACOS BIRRIA MICHELADAS TEQUILA ven a disfrutaR.”

This was a dive, less than a dive. A startup dive. I imagined they wouldn’t have tables to set up for the group. I imagined standing around in a po’ dunk dive bar with a few plastic stools, not enough for everybody. No other patrons, only the bachelor party. I imagined watching them get drunk with one bartender, the owner of a startup dive.

With the memory of street tacos behind the church fresh in my mind, it occurred to me that I could make this my escape. We were already separated from the group. I made an appearance, and now I could be done with the bachelor party. And so we were. We caught a taxi back to the city.

As was the case in Mexico City, I marveled at how orderly the traffic was, how the cars follow rules of the road as if in the United States. On the way home, I almost regretted missing the main destination of the bachelor party. Chuck had been talking about one specific bar ever since he moved to Guadalajara: Cantaritos El Guero. It’s wild, insane energy. I wanted to see it, but I wasn’t willing to put up with any more cheapskate programming as it got late.

I thought about that Mexican who told me the name of the startup dive bar. He was insistent that the group go there, instead of going straight to Cantaritos. I remember hearing he was a local to Tequila. I assumed he was friends with the owner and would be drinking free. The next day I suggested this to the gringo expats. Their eyes widened as a light bulb lit inside their minds, and they said they believed he probably was drinking free. They also confirmed all my assumptions about the startup dive bar.

Moral of the Story

Stop taking tourists to street tacos behind the church!

If you’re somewhere besides Mexico, stop taking tourists to the cheapskate equivalent. If they’re backpackers on a shoestring, fine. Or if they’re in town for a long time, I understand that gringos are charmed by cheap, informal food stalls. I usually show gringos the produce markets.

Chuck is a notorious cheapskate, and he gets off on being fed until his belly is full for $2. But you need to think about the tourists. Many of these gringos only came for the weekend. So they had the bachelor party their first night, as soon as they got off the plane. Then they had whatever was convenient for their hangover before a rehearsal dinner on the second night, which was good but not Mexican cuisine. Then more not-so-Mexican fare on their last night at the wedding.

The evening of the bachelor party was, for some of them, the only meal out on the town: street tacos behind the church in the best place to take a shit in Tequila. When they get back to the States, somebody who has never been to Mexico is going to ask, “How was the food?” And they’re going to say, “It was okay. Not too different than Mexican food here.”

That is why you don’t take tourists to street tacos behind the church. You’re doing your host country an injustice!