Americas Top Restaurants
We ate our way across the country to find the quintessential versions of six American Classics: pizza, steak, tacos, hamburgers, fried chicken, and ribs. After we chose the three finalists in each category, we shared our picks with Food Network. Read on to savor the delicious journey - then watch Food Network on August 18 as Alton Brown reveals our winners.

Tacos
The Place: Taco Taco Cafe
145 East Hilderbrand Avenue
San Antonio, Texas
210.822.9533

WHY ITS THE BEST. The lines are long and start early at this 40-seat breakfast-and-lunch restaurant that cooks the best cheap tacos in town. Breakfast may seem an odd time for Mexican food for some, but the chorizo-and-egg tacos and chilaquiles will satisfy cravings you never knew you had.

Everything - from the tortillas to the salsas and refried beans - is made fresh daily, and the El Taco Norteño (a flour tortilla stuffed with beans, cheese, avocado, and grilled beef or chicken) has reached cult status.

WHAT TO ORDER. El Norteño and bacon-and-egg taco with a side of rice and beans.

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2011 Readers' Choice: Best breakfast tacos - Taco Taco Cafe

" Each weekend it's the same thing. Customers start lining up early for a seat at Taco Taco Cafe, 145 E. Hildebrand Ave., the orderly queue frequently snaking out the door. The attraction is no secret, thanks to a host of local, regional and national publications that have heaped praise on the cozy Mexican-food eatery's generously filled tacos. Taco Taco's latest laurel? Readers' Choice for best breakfast tacos. Made with fresh flour tortillas the size of dinner plates, Taco Taco's breakfast tacos are prepared under the ever-vigilant eye of owner Helen Velesiotis. "I put so much love into the tacos, it's unbelievable. Every taco has to almost go through me," she says. "I'm always looking into everything, making sure everything is fresh, ripe, fluffy, tastes just right." The menu lists 21 varieties with fillings combined in various permutations, but, really, the possibilities are, if not endless, more than enough. "There's a lot, because you can add on whatever, you know," Velesiotis says. "You can add on rice, beans, potatoes, cheese, guacamole, bacon, chorizo, country (sausage). So what people do is they mix the tacos with other ingredients, so probably there's at least 300 combinations." Taco Taco Cafe also won second-place honors for best restaurant for the buck, and third place for its tortillas. Congratulations Taco Taco! 145 E. Hildebrand, 822-9533, www.tacotacosa.com..

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WOAI Best of San Antonio 2011- Best Breakfast Tacos

" The winner of our inaugural Best of San Antonio series is Taco Taco, at the corner of Hildebrand and McCullough, just north of Downtown. Things got a little emotional over at Taco Taco when we walked in with our camera. "Thank you WOAI. We love you!" said Helen Velesiotis, the owner of Taco Taco. She tells me a lot of love is what makes her tacos the best. "I love San Antonio! Thank you San Antonio for everything you've given me. Thank you WOAI, you're the best," said Helen. We asked you to nominate your favorite place to get a breakfast taco – and boy did you ever respond! We have been overwhelmed with hundred of nominations. Congratulations Taco Taco! 145 E. Hildebrand, 822-9533, www.tacotacosa.com..

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Voted Best Breakfast Tacos by SA Current 2011

"In 2007, when Taco Taco joined world-renowned restaurants such as Peter Luger Steakhouse (Brooklyn, N.Y.) and Wolfgang Puck's CUT (Beverly Hills, Calif.) on Bon Appétit and Food Network's collaborative list of Top American Restaurants (the award: Best Tacos in America), owner Helen Velesiotis was visiting her native Greece and missed their visit. But when WOAI showed up a few weeks ago — unannounced, with a camera crew — to present her with another Best Breakfast Taco award for her growing collection, Velesiotis was there in her bustling kitchen. "I cried for an hour and a half," she told us. "But that's OK. People saw how much I care." In a city where breakfast tacos can be found on nearly every corner, the ones served at Taco Taco stand out as a hands-down favorite for all walks of life. 145 E. Hildebrand, 822-9533, www.tacotacosa.com..

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San Antonio Magazine Best of The City 2010 Editors' and Readers' Choice Best Breakfast Tacos

"Yes, you can get breakfast tacos on every corner in this town, but we still go back to this corner for bigger than your head tacos, plump with stuffings and cupped with homecrafted tortillas. Fast and geniune, the service is twice as nice, too. Taco Taco Cafe 145 E. Hildebrand, 822-9533, www.tacotacosa.com..

"This place looks like Austin," said a friend. Well, maybe an Austin circa 1950. The look is very Anglo (white walls, orange swivel chairs at the abbreviated counter, and tiles with a frilly floral design.) But the menu is pre Mexican, and among the plethora of tacos, the biggest and best is the Norteño. This behemoth boasts a homemade flour tortillas nearly the size of an individual pizza. Said tortilla is grilled to a toasty finish and stuffed within an inch of its life with thickly sliced, reasonably tender beef fajita meat (the chicken is almost as good). Then it's piled even higher with a layer of refried beans plus sliced avocado and bell pepper and melted white cheese. You won't need to eat again for three days.

Ignore the restaurant's gringo-fied name and the fact that the owner, Helen Velesiotis, is not exactly an abuela from Oaxaca: when breakfast tacos are this good, questions of authenticity are moot. And the tortilla-and-egg concoctions at this laid-back San Antonio cafe are spectacular. Cradled by delicate house-made flour tortillas, the indelicate mess of fluffy eggs, along with some morning-friendly meat (potatoes, refried beans), can kill a hangover as quickly as it can concert a taco purist.

When you name yourself Taco Taco, you're staking out a clearly defined niche. Not to say that you can't find enchiladas, menudo or picadillo at this family-owned, Olmos Park-area restaurant, which has attained national TV fame while cementing its repeat Best of S.A. title. But people come for the tacos, and their breakfast selection alone boasts 19 enticing choices. You can't go wrong with the Chorizo & Egg, Super Taco, or Papa Ranchero, but no one would blame you if you wanted to sample all 19 before you're done.

Dig a little deeper:
Taco Taco Cafe and Los Valles Fruits and Foods.
Taco Taco Cafe is totally insider. San Antonio natives cram into this tiny breakfast taco joint daily for the chilaquiles (egg with tortilla strips, peppers, spices, tomatoes, and cheese).

You may go into Taco Taco Cafe expecting to share, yet the gigantic tacos are almost big enough for two. But suck it up, Bucko, and eat the whole thing. Better yet, order a breakfast plate (served all day) so you can delight in two handmade flour or corn tortillas plus potato chunks that straddle soft and crispy as if they were one texture.

They don't call it the biggest and the best for nothing. One popular Taco Norteño is sire to satisfy two or three hearty appetites. This taco is simple but serious on flavor.

A jumbo, slightly toasted flower tortilla is stuffed with fluffy refried beans, tender beef fajitas and avocado and topped with melted white cheese. Juicy chicken fajitas can be substituted for beef if preferred.

Recognized for having the best tacos in America by the Food Network, Taco Taco Cafe's food is homemade from the freshest ingredients and contains no added animal fat. Feel free to indulge without feeling too guilty.

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"South Texas's most accessible menu item- the humble bean and cheese taco- can be dauntingly problematic for San Antonio's sparse vegetarian population. Among local foodstuffs it is unmatched for economy and portability, a working musician's dream. Unfortunately, it is also usually tainted with Tex-Mex cuisine's most ubiquitous additive: bacon fat. "Ninety-nine percent of Mexican food has bacon grease in it," scolds Helen Velesiotis, proprietor of Olmos Park's acclaimed Taco Taco. "We don't do that." Velesiotis and Taco Taco are among an ever-growing number of progressive central SA eateries catering to vegetarians (and good health in general) by offering lard-free beans. Several other formal restaurants offer veggie beans as well, but hard-rocking, hard-drinking music aficionados demand the most casual nooks to nurse their nightclub hangovers on a Saturday morning for pocket change. It's hard to exaggerate how well Taco Taco does everything they do. So, hyperbole aside, their refried beans taste like they were trod upon by tiny gods' feet. They've concocted the perfect beans-and-cheese combo, upon which there can be no improvement: deliciously and delicately flavored refried beans (lubed with pure vegetable oil), American cheese, swathed in their amazing corn tortillas. The flour tortilla version is much bigger, but don't get greedy- the corn alternative packs an infinitely more delectable taste-punch....."ROCKERS DELIGHT" In Search Of The Perfect Bean and Cheese Taco....SA Current