Tacos Chifo, Ventura

Tacos El Chifo

Parking Lot

Sam's Central Market

Ventura Ave.

Ventura, CA

I always like tacos, but sometimes I want a good, meat and cheese quesadilla. It's like comfort food for me, even though my mom never made quesadillas. And the one that I seem to crave the most is out on the Avenues (which the businesses all seem to refer to as the "West End").

In the last few weeks, I've ended up sitting outside Sam's Central Market a couple of times, eating a hot quesadilla in the cold evening air, cheese burning my fingers as I tear the quesadilla into bite size pieces.

The quesadilla at Taco Chifo (I tried to look up "Chifo" to see what it means, and came up blank on Google) is large and for $6 is heavy on the cheese and asada, with tomato, lettuce and salsa verde. The cheese is so hot a gooey that I have to be careful or it'll burn me, and the smell stays on my hands for hours, but it's really good and warming the way that hot soup is warming. It warms from the inside in the cool night air.

The guy at the window is pretty nice, though his English was difficult to understand. The menu here is a bit wider than Tacos Jerez, which is about two blocks away (see my Feb. 29, 2012 post). The truck is big and clean, and the food fresh. I've had the tacos here also, and they're also good. Service is very fast as well.

They serve burritos and tortas, too, but  I'm not that hungry when I'm there in the evening. They look good, though, when I see them being ordered. There's always a few people milling about and one table to sit at. I didn't check the hours, but I've been by as early as 6 PM and as late as midnight.

The Yelp reviews are good, too.