Mexican Misfire

Posted by: Michael Orey on August 26

I was so excited. A tiny item in The New York Times food section last week tipped me off that Toloache, a nearby Mexican restaurant, was going to mark its one-year anniversary today by selling tacos at a buck apiece. Not hard-shell, fast-food tacos, but soft, hand-made corn tortilla tacos, from a place that won plaudits from longtime New York food critic Gael Greene. Eager to share news of this victual value, I e-mailed a number of my BusinessWeek colleagues, and by 11:45 a.m. had compiled take-out orders from half a dozen of them, which I carefully tallied on a blue Post-it note. Most chose to get one of each kind on special — chicken, pork and mushroom. Then … I waited too long. I started calling at 12:25 p.m. and at first got only busy signals. When I finally got through, a guy told me somewhat frantically that they weren’t taking any more orders. “What do you mean?” I asked, in a voice that probably bordered on the hysterical. “I called earlier and was told …” He cut me off: “Okay, hang on please.” After 15 minutes on hold, I could see the writing on the taqueria wall. In defeat and disgrace, I e-mailed my co-workers the bad news: There would be no Toloache tacos. I, the keeper of the Working Lunch blog, had let them down in their hour of need.