A look at this celebration of textures, flavors and tacos
New Hampshire diners like fish tacos so much they’ve been known to DIY them at the restaurant.
“Every year we have customers order ceviche,” Jose Rodriguez said, “but instead of having the tostadas they ask for tortillas on the side and they make tacos out of it. It’s definitely something we’re not too used to seeing, but it makes a nice little taco. You can’t go wrong with that, you know? It’s a hack. A taco hack.”
Rodriguez is the manager of Puerto Vallarta Mexican Grill in Manchester, and he observed that people in New Hampshire love seafood tacos — maybe more than people in Mexico.
“Fish tacos in general — and I mean, I don’t even like to say it — they’re not very popular around the area I’m from. My family is from an inland area. In Mexico they’re not a big popularity of ours. We go for more like the whole fish, fish plates. But here [in New England], honestly, everyone loves seafood. So everyone likes seafood; everyone likes tacos. Give it a mix in between both of them and you get kind of like what people are looking for.”
Rodriguez said for Puerto Vallarta and its sister restaurants, Nuevo Vallarta and Vallarta Tequila Bar, seafood tacos are a mainstay.
“Here we have grilled fish tacos and we have crispy fish tacos, which are breaded fish that we deep-fry. But we also have crispy shrimp tacos. Everyone likes the crispy fish, and with the shrimp dishes it’s the same thing. We have grilled shrimp tacos, but we had deep-fried shrimp with rice and a salad and everything, and people would start grabbing tortillas and making tacos out of them. So we started making tacos out of it. Everyone seems to like their breaded seafood deep fried.”
And that’s not counting the off-menu items like the ceviche tacos. Ceviche is a way of preparing seafood without heat. The fish or shrimp is cooked, but with acid. The seafood is marinated in something highly acidic, like lime juice, and it is cooked chemically, but cold, and it is served cold as well, which, Rodriguez said, can make for a delicious taco. Most tacos, he said, benefit from a squeeze of lime for some acid, and the ceviche is already acidic, so it really works well.
For most customers, however, the go-to seafood tacos are made with fish, Rodriguez said.
“We use tilapia for deep fried whole fish and everything like that,” he said, “but we use haddock for tacos.” Traditionally, fish tacos are served on a grilled flour tortilla, he said, “but we use corn. Your options are open, though. If you want to do flour, you can do flour. Some people have done hard shell. It really depends. We usually use the authentic corn tortilla; it’s a little more Mexican traditional. We give you all your toppings on the side, give you some rice, a mixture of cabbage and lettuce, pico de gallo, and some sauce, so you can customize your own tacos. We give you a homemade sauce as well with the fish, a chipotle cream sauce, to give it a little spice.”
Fish tacos are usually made with fresh white ocean fish. On the beach in Baja they would probably be made with a meaty fish like shark or swordfish, but according to Adam Podraza, Kitchen Manager at Makris Lobster & Steak House in Concord, here in New England it is more likely to be a cold-water Atlantic fish. Which one you use, he said, really depends on how you plan to cook it. Firm, “steaky” fish is better for a grilled fish taco, he said, but flaky fish tends to fall apart on a grill and is better battered and deep fried. The crispy batter holds the fish together, and gives it some crunch — as in fish and chips.
“Up here in the north,” Podraza said, “it’s very common to see haddock tacos. Cod works very well, too. As you go further south, you see more mahi-mahi, and I love mahi-mahi! It works well up here as well, but it’s more common to see haddock as a fish taco. It’s a flaky fish. It’s white with a very mild flavor. It’s a whole lot flakier than your mahi-mahi. Mahi-mahi is more of a steak fish, like a swordfish, which makes a great taco, but you do it as a different preparation. You’ll see a lot of winter fish tacos that are being fried, as opposed to something like the mahi-mahi, which might be grilled, or pan-seared, maybe blackened, something like that. A seasoned application versus being a mild, flaky fried fish.”
Podraza said East Coast American fish tacos are fundamentally different from Pacific Coast Mexican ones.
“In northern Mexico, they’re going to use whatever they’ve got,” he said. “If someone’s got a swordfish or whatever — whatever the catch of the day was.” And it would probably be flame grilled, which calls for a firmer fleshed fish, he said. “I don’t like grilling haddock. I don’t like grilling cod — they flake away too hard. Really, I go with the mahi-mahi and the haddock.” He said that for tacos it’s a good idea to stay away from strong-flavored, oily fish like mackerel. “You could do a striped bass,” he said. “Striped bass would be wonderful grilled. That would work out very nicely.”
“For me,” Podraza said, “my ideal [taco] would have something fried — you know, batter-fried. It’s going to give it some texture, plus it will take on a sauce well. Even today we’ve got a beautiful pineapple cilantro salsa at the restaurant that we’re using with our tuna. A grilled tuna taco would be fantastic too.” He said fresh tuna is more affordable than most people would assume. “Our tuna right now is $15.99 a pound — that’s cheaper than a steak.”
Given that it is ice-fishing season, Podraza noted that some fresh-water fish work in a taco, even if they aren’t traditional.
“You could use a toothy fish like a pike,” he said, “and bass would be wonderful. You’re looking for something that’s going to take on the flavors of your taco versus fighting against it.”
If you are comfortable with looking for signs and portents, the popularity of fish tacos might be an indicator of New Hampshire’s evolving tastes. Roger Soulard, owner of North Side Grille in Hudson, has been a little surprised to see fish tacos adopted as a mainstream dish.
“It’s funny,” Soulard said. “When we first opened 13 years ago fish tacos weren’t on the menu. I always give credit to one of our cooks. His name was Terry and he was probably our largest seafood lover. I just want something different to serve something that wasn’t like you’d get from a diner down the street or even just like other American fare. We needed something different. that we could make day in and day out. Terry wasn’t from California, but he was from out West — Arizona — and he was like, ‘Well, what do you think about fish tacos?’ And I was like, ‘What are you thinking?’ He came up with a recipe, and we tweaked it here and there, and it’s been here ever since. What I love about it is it’s all simple and fresh. It works. Our customers love it.”
At the time, though, Soulard was worried about whether his customers would actually order it. It was unusual for New Hampshire at the time, he said. “Sometimes we’ll have like a great idea but unfortunately sometimes our Hudson neighborhood just is not ready for it yet. I remember a lot of cool sandwiches and ideas that we had in the beginning. Avocado was like something that we could not sell to our customers, though, for instance. We were wasting so much avocado. I was like, ‘Alright, we’ve got to stop ordering avocado; they’re just not eating it.’ But then we gave it a break for like a year or two. And then we just reintroduced it as guacamole. Obviously the guac is a little bit more flavorful, but that’s how we introduced it to the crowd. But like when we first started out, yeah, like we were just throwing out so much avocado.”
But for whatever reason, North Side Grille’s fish tacos took off right away.
“It’s one of the few things that has not changed on our menu,” Soulard said. “It wasn’t always originally a classic, but we made it a classic. So that’s like one of my favorite things about it — it’s something that found its way onto our menu and stayed there. It’s easy to put something like a cheeseburger on a menu and it’s never going anywhere because it’s the American cheeseburger. But if you told me fish tacos 13 years ago, I wouldn’t be able to tell you that that really would be a thing. But now, 13 years later, I’m like, yeah, the fish tacos could never come off [our menu], because if they did come off, we’d still be making them regardless. People would come in and they’d be like, ‘We know fish tacos aren’t on the menu, but can we have them anyway?’”
Soulard’s fish tacos are made with grilled haddock.
“That’s kind of nice,” he said, “because it feels like a cleaner option, compared to the fried seafood that you usually find in our area. There’s just something about the grilled white flaky haddock that is lightly seasoned. The only thing that’s not the healthiest about it might be the aioli we serve on it. It’s pretty much mayonnaise, cilantro and fresh lime, that’s all whipped up, and that’s the basic topping. Our recipe is pretty simple. It has fresh diced tomato, light lettuce, light cabbage, and it’s topped with that cilantro aioli. That’s our classic fish taco that, like I said, it’s been on there for at least a decade. We have not changed it at all.”
Isabel Reyes, co-owner of Los Reyes Street Tacos & More in Derry, said that while fish and shrimp tacos are always popular at her restaurant there is an extra demand in late winter.
“I was raised in the U.S.,” she said. “I was 10 months old when we came here. But when we visit my parents’ home area, it’s not on the coast of Mexico, it’s more in the center, so people don’t do much fresh fish or shrimp. The only time we really eat it is during Lent. You know, Mexico is very Catholic-oriented. It’s not the only religion in Mexico, but obviously its influence is important. So [at this time of year] we utilize a lot of shrimp, fish and veggies into our Lent options. So if you look at our special Lent menu on Instagram, we did incorporate that. from our hometown. We call them Boom Fish Tacos. They were the idea of Jose Reyes; he’s the co-owner.”
“[The Boom Fish Tacos] aren’t technically on our regular menu, Reyes said. “It started as a Lent special last year, but then people loved it, so it’s kind of stayed since then. It’s two battered cod fish tacos on a flour tortilla. And it’s topped with the in-house cabbage slaw that we offer for our shrimp Baja tacos. And then it’s topped with cilantro. And then we wanted to add a little something of New Hampshire, so we added maple chipotle cream. And then it comes with a side of our house-made pico de gallo. So it’s a regular pico de gallo, but the Southwest part comes from roasted corn. And then it comes with the cilantro white rice.”
“Our Baja shrimp tacos are pretty similar,” Reyes said. “For the most part, we use the same ingredients that we already have in house. Those are on a corn tortilla with grilled shrimp. They have the same cabbage slaw. We do chipotle, but just regular chipotle, with some ancho chilies. The Baja tacos come in three and with no sides.” There are three of the shrimp tacos to an order, she said, because the corn tortillas are smaller than the flour ones. “The corn tortillas are 6 inches, and the flour are 8.”
“I think fish tacos are a type of comfort food,” Jason Berkman from Fish & Chix in Derry said. “They blend fish and some tropical ingredients that go together well. Typically there’s a little bit of spice, a little bit of vinegar, salt, and some creamy cheese that goes with it. I think that people gravitate toward them just because of the combination of flavor.”
Fish & Chix uses haddock for its fish tacos, which are battered and deep-fried.
“We actually use a soft corn tortilla,” Berkman said, “so they’re a little bit different from what you’d typically find. You’re either getting a hard corn shell, or a lot of people serve it on the soft flour tortilla. Ours is a yellow corn [tortilla], similar in softness to the flour but just a little bit different. Fish tacos almost always have cabbage; we use red pickled cabbage. It brings some acidity and brightness to the taco. We serve ours with chipotle mayonnaise, red pickled cabbage, pico de gallo, and cotija cheese. It’s crumbly, somewhat soft still, and salty.”
Berkman said the fish tacos have been a hit with customers across the board.
“The full spectrum of people order it,” he said, “younger and older. I think what happens a lot is people try them and they tell their friends and they come in.”
The fish tacos come two to an order, and Berkman is not a traditionalist when it comes to sides. “We serve ours with fries,” he said, “but you can substitute that with onion rings, potato salad, whatever. We make a really good chicken taco, too, but the fish is by far the No. 1 that people order.”
The fish taco panel
Puerto Vallarta Mexican Grill (865 Second St., Manchester, 935-9182, vallartamexicannh.com) is open from 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, until 10:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and until 9 p.m. on Sunday. Fish tacos (made with batter-fried haddock), grilled shrimp tacos, and ceviche are available as dinner plates for $22.
North Side Grille (323 Derry Road, Hudson, 886-3663, northsidegrillenh.com) is open 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday. Fish tacos (made with grilled Cajun haddock) are $17.
Los Reyes Street Tacos & More (127 Rockingham Road, Derry, 845-8327, losreyesstreettacos.com) is open Monday through Saturday from 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. (9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday). The eatery is also open for lunch from 11:30 to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. “Boom Boom” tacos (made with batter-fried cod) are $15 on a special Lent menu. “Baja” tacos (made with grilled shrimp) are $13.95.
Fish & Chix (22 Manchester Road, Derry, 704-3410, fshnchx.com) is open seven days a week, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and until 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Fish tacos (made with batter-fried haddock) are $13.
The fish market at Makris Lobster & Steak House (354 Sheep Davis Road, Concord, 225-7665, eatalobster.com) is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Monday, and until 8 p.m. on Sunday. The availability and price of fish depend on market conditions.
