Fish Tacos

It was bargain day on Saturday at Macy’s School of Cooking in Mission Valley – I’ve mentioned the classes before – usually they run 25 or 30 bucks, but once in a while they do a charity drive where you just need to donate some cans of food or $6. Chef Deborah Schneider was the guest instructor, promoting her new Baja cookbook. I wasn’t sure if we would get a taste of anything (as we normally would) but thought it would be interesting to see what she had going on (I recalled she was involved with the opening of Jsix last year) plus it would be good to get out of the heat for an hour.

She shared numerous recipes from her cookbook (available for purchase that day!) including a couple of salsas, made batter, deep fried fish (on a hubcap – err I mean disca, made soup and so on for an hour and a half. As a chef and teacher I really liked her. The one sample that day was a goat cheese tostada with chipotle sauce - made a few in the room cough for a minute or two.

From her point of view, a true fish taco is only beer battered and deep fried and served in a corn tortilla with a bit of avocado sauce, white sauce and salsa. She just had a short article in the paper last week – there she shared a grilled fish taco recipe. I’ve never deep fried anything in my kitchen and I don’t plan to.

The next cheap class is this Saturday at noon with Chef Bernard. Check his site for details of upcoming classes if interested.

By Sunday this talk of fish tacos got me interesting in checking out South Beach Bar and Grill in Ocean Beach. Somehow my wife has been there a few times with coworkers on one of those “Long Island Ice Tea and Fish Taco” lunches – I don’t know how they manage THAT – but she said they were pretty good. And they got a mention in this article (thanks to Gayla of Chowhound for posting that article.)

So we drove down – got lucky with parking in front of Hodad’s (great burgers there I said! Maybe we could stop in for one if we weren’t full) and walked the short block to South Beach, found a table and ordered.

Tacos are under around $2.75 I think, grilled Mahi or Wahoo or you could get a Baja deep fried fish taco. We both ordered two (skipping the rice and beans that were offered) including one deep fried for me.


Yum – the Mahi taco was okay but the deep fried really good - crisp crunch and hot – plus the fish was pretty big. Tons of toppings – but a bit too watery since juices would drip out, but not really a problem.

After a walk out on the pier where tiny fish were being caught for tacos later that day we decided that Hodad’s would have to wait for another day. Or many months. Someday. And to think I always thought that fish taco meant something else. Go figure.