Smoky smoky taco goodness

When I first moved to California, I envisioned spending weekends on little driving excursions down the coast, with stops along the highway for tasty fish tacos at roadside stands.

These dreams I had were never based upon any real experience. There was no defining moment during a vacation to the West Coast when, awestruck, I realized the import of a tortilla-and-fish combination greater than the sum of its parts. I just kinda imagined it would be the sort of thing I'd find when I moved out to the left coast.

And I was wrong.

I moved to San Francisco, which, despite being just about my favorite place in the whole wide world, is not the sort of place from which these warmer-weather Southern California morsels derive. It's a culinary mecca, and there's more obscenely high-quality food being grown and prepared per capita than anywhere else I've seen, but the fog and the cool air on the Bay hasn't lent itself to inspired fish tacos.

The trick, it seems, is to drive farther south.

On the well-informed suggestion of a friend whose family's winery is nearby, the Princess and I stopped at Ruddell's Smokehouse in Cayucos, California, where we were told that good fish tacos would await us. We found the place crowded (good sign) and were told that tacos were taking around 15 minutes (perfectly understandable). I plopped down my money and sat on the seawall across the street to do some people watching while our tacos got born.

Forty-five minutes later, we were famished and without a taco. It's a good thing we were on vacation, or our patience might have turned to irritation, but thankfully, we got the foil-wrapped present and marched down to the sand to sit near the water and consume it.

This was the mythical fish taco I'd had my unfounded dreams about! Wow. The taste of Ruddell's smoked albacore is entirely unique. Wrap it in a warm tortilla with apples (yes, apples...it works) lettuce, tomato, and a cumin-mayonnaise dressing, and it magically becomes that California beach food that I dreamed about. Bring a flexible time schedule and an appetite, and order more than one.