Review: "Taco" by Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado

Taco by Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado
Published October 2025 via Bloomsbury Academic
★★★

When I tell you how much I love this series...!

Taco turned up on NetGalley ten minutes after, I kid you not, I returned from picking up my hold copies of Doll and Doctor at the library. Obviously it was an instant request, because while I am ambivalent about tacos (this is my fault, not tacos'; I am ambivalent about many foods that are widely considered delicious), I am not ambivalent about this series. Object Lessons takes readers through short, varied romps on subjects as varied as...well, as tacos and doctors, or tacos and pregnancy tests, or tacos and questionnaires...

Here we get an exploration of the mighty taco. In many ways this is a food tour: Sánchez Prado grew up in Mexico City, where tacos were (are!) a staple, and although he no longer lives there, tacos remain an integral part of the culinary side of his visits.

I am most compelled by Sánchez Prado's discussions of authenticity and what it means for a taco to be "authentic"—and whether that matters at all in the first place. He mostly focuses on tacos he has known and loved but also gets some fairly entertaining digs in at Taco Bell. Here I should perhaps note that I've never set foot in a Taco Bell, let alone eaten there—my family did not eat fast food when I was growing up, and I never developed a taste for most of it—and thus have no informed opinions about it, but I found the history of its founding interesting. I'm not sure I'm convinced by Sánchez Prado's refusal to try Taco Bell even for the sake of the book, but he has a point that taco as an adjective (even for someone who takes a liberal view, as Sánchez Prado does, of what a taco can be) is perhaps a bridge too far.

But a lot of the book is suited best for people who, you know, eat tacos (and eat meat) and, ideally, think it's a great idea to take their own taco tour somewhere. This should absolutely be required reading for any foodies visiting Mexico City in particular, though Sánchez Prado talks quite a bit about taco culture in other cities (LA, St. Louis, etc.) as well. This is also what made me not the best fit for the book, though, and the book in turn not entirely the book for me: as a slightly neurotic, nearly lifelong vegetarian, I don't get all that much stimulation from descriptions of meat-heavy dishes that I'll never eat; I long ago learned to skip over menu descriptions when there's meat involved, and it turns out that that's a hard habit to break...which is not ideal when reading a book with description after description of tortillas filled with some form of meat!

So go investigate the book, and the series, and perhaps some tacos—and take your taco recommendations from Sánchez Prado, not from me.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.