1 · Read the board
The whole menu is written on the chalkboard on the wall. Everything on it is on this website too, with the prices, so you can decide before you walk in.
Yes, you can sit down
Come eat with us
People have been ordering from La Tapatía for forty years and never once come inside to eat. The dining room is right there, past the counter. It is small, it is clean, and there is a hand-painted mural on the wall that most of Racine has never seen.
Dine in or carry out | 7:00 AM – 12:00 AM every day | Cash only · ATM inside
The wall nobody expects.
There is a mural
in the back
A full wall, painted by hand. A woman carrying the Mexican flag across a field of agave, with the mountains behind her and a charro hat at her feet. Underneath it sits a shelf lined with trophies.
You cannot see any of it from the street, and you will not see it if you order at the counter and walk back out. You have to sit down.
Come take the picture. Tag us when you do.
See what to orderHow it works
Order at the counter, take a table
There is no host and no waiting list. It works the way a neighborhood taquería has always worked, and it takes about ten seconds to figure out.
2 · Order at the counter
Tell them what you want. If you are not sure, say so. Somebody will walk you through it, in English or in Spanish.
3 · Pay cash
Cash only, no cards, and that is not changing. There is an ATM inside if you need it, so a card in your pocket is still fine.
4 · Grab a seat
Take any open table. The food comes out fast and it comes out hot, which is the whole reason to eat it here instead of in your car.
The room
A few tables, kept clean
It is not a big dining room and we have never pretended otherwise. It is a handful of tables in a bright room, painted orange and green, with family photographs on the walls and the market humming through the archway.
If it is your first time.
What to order
sitting down
Anything fried to order is better eaten here than carried home, and that is most of what this kitchen is known for.
- Tacos dorados. Fried when you order them. A food writer picked ours as the best in Racine and said it was the shells that did it.
- A combo plate. Taco, tostada, sope, rice, beans and guacamole on one plate.
- Breakfast, from 7 AM. Chilaquiles, huevos rancheros, chorizo and egg. Almost nobody in Racine knows we do this.
- Menudo, carnitas or barbacoa on a Saturday or Sunday.
Bring a camera.
It photographs better than it looks from outside
The building is a plain white brick corner. Inside it is orange and green brick, a painted mural, framed photographs going back decades, piñatas hanging over the grocery aisles, and a shelf of trophies.
Racine has a taco tradition that food writers fly in for, and this is one of the rooms it happens in. If you take a good picture in here, put it up and tag us. That is how the rest of the city finds out.
Directions and parking