31 May 2024
James Cameron has a fiesta of a time at the pub’s Cantina…
When you’re a family of four you need to have viewing options for every combination of family members, otherwise when you find yourself with a spare half an hour you will spend most of it debating whether you can watch X without Y being present, or scrolling through endless options on Netflix, none of which are quite right. For the section of the viewing Venn diagram that is myself and my youngest son, we default to a YouTube show where they compare junk food from around the world.
At this stage of the review you may be wondering what any of this has to do with The Boot, but it explains why a few days ago I was watching a programme entirely about Birria Tacos, the outcome of which was that I dearly longed for Birria Tacos. If you ask the universe for something it will provide, sometimes, so I was subsequently delighted to see that the menu of The Boot includes Birria Tacos.
For those who have yet to experience them, Birria Tacos are traditionally made using goat, though The Boot uses the less adventurous beef shin. The meat is slow cooked in a broth, then served in a fried taco with the broth served on the side as a consommé for dipping. The whole endeavour is very messy, but my goodness is it flavoursome.
The first bite brought back long distant memories of a brief period spent living in LA when I was five, that was how powerful and distinctive the flavours were. The taco was crispy, the cheese was stringy, the coriander was fresh and strong and the beef melted in your mouth. When dipped in the hot, tasty consommé it was flavour squared. It built to a crescendo of fishing crispy cheese bits out of the bottom of my consommé.
This is not the only way that The Boot is the answer to my prayers. St Albans is distinctly lacking in Mexican dining options, though the lifeless corpse of Benito’s Hat still haunts me as I walk down Chequer Street.
To find top quality Mexican food in a lovely historic pub is slap bang in the middle of my Venn diagram of happiness. They had some of my favourite beers on tap, including Harveys Sussex Best, and the cherry on the top was that they played Blur songs for the duration of my visit (if it had been Oasis this would be a very different review).
Of course, there is more to the menu than Birria Tacos. We started with Padron Peppers, the Mexican equivalent to edamame beans with their salty blasts of refreshment. They were juicy without being too charred, though we could have done with a discard plate for the spent heads.
They had a vegetarian and a vegan option for the tacos, the latter of which was Spiced Cauliflower, piled so high it was difficult to fold the taco.
This was a little too cold, temperature-wise, and a little too hot, spice-wise, but again had good flavours. On the side we had chips, which were just right, and tater tots. You can’t go wrong with tater tots, and they didn’t, they were crispy and delicious served with a smoky chipotle mayo.
It was all very reasonably priced, the whole thing came to £43 for three of us, including beer. Better still, we were in and out in 45 minutes meaning this is a perfect spot for lunching in the city.
There’s a lovely welcoming feel to The Boot. The low ceilings make it warm and cosy, an ideal destination in the winter or the half of the summer when it remains cold and damp outside.
There is a touch of humour in the wood-panelled toilets, and an interesting array of photos on the walls pointing to the long history of the pub. Hopefully this means that they’ll be serving superb tacos for many centuries to come.
And if you’re wondering if I drank down the remainder of the consommé at the end of my meal, then you clearly don’t know me very well.
