Tostadas Are A Rare Misfire In The World Of Mexican Food

In the culinary world, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more resourceful style of cuisine than Mexican food. Every dish is basically some permutation of a tortilla, meat, cheese, and a handful of go-to toppings.

What’s even more impressive is that each one can hold its own. Yeah, enchiladas and burritos are practically cut from the same tortilla cloth. But you'll still spend a good five minutes staring at the menu trying to decide which one you want to give you several trips to the commode later that day.

However, as much as it pains me to say, the tostada is a rare misfire in the otherwise bulletproof world of Mexican food.

Now, I have something of an obsession with food structural integrity. I like it when food is constructed so it doesn’t just fall apart all over the place and cause a mess. It needs to hold up. That’s my beef with Pittsburgh’s Primanti sandwich. I know you Yinzers don’t want to hear it, but soft bread like that wasn’t meant to stand up to the rigors of fry grease and cole slaw. It's a complete mess to eat.

This is typically not a problem with Mexican foods. A properly constructed, tightly wrapped burrito could probably withstand a nuclear blast. Meanwhile, tacos seem to have been designed in some kind of street food laboratory to hold up under the stress of being consumed while hammered out of your gourd.

Now tostadas? Someone was asleep at the wheel when those things were first cooked up.

Whoever ordered that is about to have their shirt ruined. (Getty Images)

The Tostada Is Fundamentally Flawed

If you’re unfamiliar with a tostada here are the broad strokes. You take a tortilla, crisp it up while keeping it flat so it’s like a tortilla frisbee, and then put the toppings on top of that. Simple, yet completely ineffective.

I had experienced some less-than-impressive performances from tostadas in the past. Still, I had the opportunity to give them a shot at redemption just last night. I’m a nice guy, so I thought, “What the hell, maybe I got some defective tostadas the last half dozen times I gave them a chance to prove their mettle and they let me down?”

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, then I must be certifiable when it comes to tostadas. I swear it’s the same story every time I try one.

There’s no perfect place to take a bite since they’re circular so I chomp into the crisp tortilla and like clockwork the entire thing shatters in half and dumps some of the contents on me.

Every. Single. Time.

That's precisely what happened this time too. I took a bite and littered the tabletop with delicious, wasted debris of chorizo, cheese, and what I believe was some kind of pickled something. Tortilla shrapnel went everywhere, a splinter of which even wound up in my mangled beard. It was a disaster.

It’s absolutely enraging because I see a lot of potential from tostadas. They’re delicious, but the design flaws are so maddening. 

The hard taco is what the tostada was always meant to be. (Getty Images)

The Hard Taco Solved The Tostada's Shortcomings, So Why Are They Still Here?

What I can’t understand is why they exist if the hard shell taco is a perfected version of what the tostada aspires to be. It holds everything in place while utilizing the same ingredients. Going with a tostada over a hard taco would be like reaching for an abacus when a calculator is sitting right next to it.

Why make things more difficult for yourself? Work smarter, not harder; that's what I say.

Perhaps the hard taco evolved from the tostada. In a display of natural selection diners like myself got so fed up with tostadas they said, "Dammit, that's it, fold the thing in half!" and the hard taco was born.

Yet the tostada persists...

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’ve been approaching tostadas incorrectly. But if that’s the case, I’d still submit that it is the tostada that is truly at fault. It’s the tostada’s fault for not bringing something one can eat intuitively.

I’d like to think I’m done with tostadas and that they're done with me. Unfortunately, there’s an element of FOMO. One that drags me back in about once every year and a half to test the waters once again.

Maybe 18 months from now, something will click and I’ll understand them. But for now, I’ll just take uno taco y una cerveza, por favor.

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