La Popular Taqueria | SA Weekend restaurant review

This local legend of a restaurant has true Mexican appeal – it offers a big welcome, with honest and authentic food. For taco lovers, it’s a must-visit.

La Popular Taqueria, Port Adelaide is tiny, but so welcoming. Picture Jack Fenby

A cheeky little graphic on the wall beside us shows the right – and wrong – way to eat a taco. Each step is illustrated by a cartoon character, the key point being that the taco should be held horizontally, not vertically, to avoid any contents spilling from the bottom.

It’s advice worth heeding when the filling is as delectable as the braised pork at La Popular Taqueria in Port Adelaide.

Owner/chef Daniella Guevara Monoz soaks meat from the neck and shoulder in a marinade based on the distinctive brick-red spice paste achiote, before it is wrapped in banana leaves and roasted slowly in the oven. The result is pulled pork so luscious and sweet that, compared with what is served up in most places, it’s like lobster versus fish fingers. A small bowl of the meat is brought to the table with house-pickled onions and a stack of hand-pressed corn tortillas wrapped in a cloth bundle.

La Popular is my kind of Mexican restaurant – honest, authentic, welcoming and one of the few in town to look beyond the slapped together Tex-Mex standards gussied up with shredded cheese and sour cream.

It is also a terrific addition to the community, with the kind of mutual warmth and interactions you’d hope for when visiting an old-fashioned local store.

Owners Daniella Guevara Munoz and Kor van Dijk at La Popular Taqueria, Port Adelaide. Picture Jack Fenby

Guevara Monoz grew up in Mexico City and the name La Popular is a tribute to her old stomping ground (and a reflection of the crowd it pulls). After qualifying as a marine biologist, she and husband Kor van Dijk moved to Queensland to work on the Great Barrier Reef.

Shifting to Adelaide, she began hosting dinners featuring the food she remembered from her upbringing, before the pair created a permanent home in an old computer repair shop in the Port’s commercial heart.

Every bit of space is well-used, a bar and kitchen running down one wall, tables in a row on the opposite side and a few extras squeezed in at the front. Even then it only fits 30 people at a time, hence the two sittings scheduled each night it opens.

La Popular’s snappy menu is centred around a handful of taco options that can be ordered individually, as well as starters and sides.

Tacos with various fillings, Mexican rice, black beans at La Popular Taqueria, Port Adelaide. Picture Jack Fenby

A ‘feed me’ selection ($55) that includes a bit of everything is highly recommended. It kicks off with guacamole that is all avocado, no filler, and corn chips that, like the tortilla, are made from scratch. A chicken and tomato broth is pepped up with mellow dried guajillo chilli and finished with tortilla strips, mozzarella and avocado. Add it to the list of the world’s great nurturing soups.

Supplied Editorial Fish tacos at La Popular Taqueria, Port Adelaide. Picture Jack Fenby

“Flautas de papa” are a street snack of tortillas with a mashed potato filling, rolled into a thin cigar and deep fried until crunchy, like a more substantial take on a spring roll.

Then come the tacos, first a ready-made one, with a fillet of ocean jacket in a fine, tempura-style coating, cabbage, chipotle mayonnaise and a tomato and onion salsa, all distributed for the perfect balance.

After that, it is DIY, with the basket of tortillas and two choices of filling. Our picks are the pulled pork, of course, and a bowl of marinated beef slices that don’t have the colour or flavour you might expect from proper grilling. A punchy red chilli salsa helps to a point.

There are also serves of simple tomato-tinged Mexican rice, zucchini in a creamy sauce and wonderful, smoky braised black/turtle beans that are light years ahead of the average frijole.

While his wife runs the kitchen, van Dijk is kept busy at the bar mixing margaritas and talking diners through the collection of tequila and mezcal he has lovingly assembled. He also brings out an oversized can of choc-bourbon stout brewed in collaboration with near-neighbour Pirate Life, where La Popular has also hosted special event dinners. That’s another win for the local community.