Hidalgos Taqueria serves up egg and chorizo breakfast tacos with fresh lime. Photo by Christina Hughes Babb

This off-the-beaten-path taqueria serves up spicy goodness.

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It’s 11 a.m. on a Sunday  and I’m traveling from East Dallas home to Lake Highlands. I want to grab brunch tacos for the family, but where? Fuzzy’s is packed. I don’t have the energy to deal with it. On a hunch, I head toward the fringe — that area that isn’t quite East Dallas or Lake Highlands or Garland — Northwest Highway and Jupiter.

That’s where, for the first time ever (it’s been there two years, by the way), I notice Taqueria Hidalgo, tucked away next to a coin laundry. It’s not crowded at all. The place is spacious with a dozen tables. Two or three of them hold customers. A TV in the corner plays a Spanish news show. The signage is entirely in Spanish, but there’s one thing — an important thing — that I understand: “Tacos $1”.

Thankfully, photos along the wall identify other menu items, and the girl at the counter speaks perfect English. I order a bunch of breakfast-y tacos: tacos with varying combinations of eggs, chorizo, potatoes, cheese, rice. I add a few burritos to my order — spicy pork, steak, tongue. The shells — a mixture of soft corn and flour tortillas were remarkably soft; generous amounts of spicy chorizo married with fluffy yellow eggs is topped with fresh veggies and lime.

Green salsa drizzled on top adds adequate kick to the small but filling morsels. For $18 total, I fed four people with food to spare. The menu also included menudo, steak dinners, spicy shrimp cocktails ($6.99S-$11L), gorditas and Mexican subs ($5). Hidalgos also serves pretty pastel-colored fruit drinks, shakes and smoothies and something called Horchato, a milk-based drink with vanilla and cinnamon that is supposedly a sweet accompaniment to spicy foods ($2).

If you need colorful candy, a glitzy rosary or a portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe, they have you covered there too.

Northwest & Jupiter
214.221.8226