Come and enjoy Earth Day & Meatless Monday at Taco Punk!

Come to Taco Punk to celebrate Earth Day and Meatless Monday!  What is Meatless Monday?  At Taco Punk, it means that our black bean tacos are only $2.00, and platters cost $6.50.  Try our delicious seasoned vegetable molé, black bean and cheese tacos, or both in the same platter.  We also have excellent vegetarian sides including queso cerveza, guacamolé, and vegan options like our saffron rice, safrito black beans, and small green salads.  You’ll get an excellent meal at a great price that’s good for you and the planet.

                     Our black bean tacos are only $2.00 today!  Black bean platters are only $6.50.

Meatless Monday began in 2003 as a way to encourage people to eat healthier at the beginning of every week.  That’s because Americans tend to eat too much meat, and this can have harmful consequences  including heart disease, cancer, and osteoporosis.  Red meat, the meat most commonly consumed by Americans, is particularly harmful when people eat too much of it.  Eating less meat improves a person’s overall health, and Meatless Monday is an excellent way to make this change.  Even if you can’t come into our restaurant every week, establishing Meatless Monday at home will help you and your family. 

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with eating meat in moderation, especially the meat at Taco Punk.  Our meat is raised locally (except for our seafood, which is sustainably caught), and does not have any added preservatives or chemicals like most processed meats do.  In fact, processed meats have an even greater impact on one’s health than whole meats do.  When you do eat meat, it’s best to do so in a conscious, responsible way, and the best way to do that is to eat meat that’s locally raised and minimally processed, like the kind we serve at Taco Punk. 

From a global perspective, eating less meat has a positive effect on our entire planet.  For example, if everyone in the USA ate meat one less day a week, it would reduce pollution by as much as taking 7.6 million cars off the road.  Reducing meat consumption also helps fight deforestation.  That’s because millions of acres of rainforest have been lost to make room for grazing cattle.  Growing plants to feed humans (rather than livestock) has a much smaller environmental impact than growing meat.  That's what Earth Day and Meatless Monday are all about--treating the planet and your body the way they're meant to be treated.

                                           Earth Day is celebrated every April 22nd.

So do yourself and the world a favor.  Come celebrate Meatless Monday at Taco Punk every week.  You’ll be able to try our excellent vegetarian options for an excellent value, and help the planet at the same time.  Want to make an even bigger impact?  Walk, ride a bike, take the bus, or carpool with a group of friends or family to get here.  We want to take care of you and the Earth.  Help us out by making your Mondays meatless and delicious. 

Have a happy Earth Day!

By John Beechem, Taco Grunt and Social Media Writer.  E-mail at jbeechem2000@gmail.com.

We Know That When it Comes to Food and Ingredients, You Get What You Pay For

Welcome to the new Taco Punk blog!  We'd like to use this platform to communicate to our customers and the public in a way that lets us express more than we can in a Facebook status update, tweet, or advertisement.  Thanks for reading.  For our first post, we'd like to address one of the most common critiques against us: our prices.  We'd love to give our tacos away for free, but we wouldn't be around for very long if we did.  What follows is a short explanation of why we price our food the way that we do.  

At Taco Punk, we put a lot of time, talent and treasure into what we make.  It’s not easy or cheap, but we know that it’s worth it.  Here’s why.

Our ingredients come from farms, not factories.   We have relationships with regional farmers, and buy our meat from people we know and trust.  Our chicken mole is made from whole-body chickens supplied by Amish farmers in Ohio.  We smoke the chicken ourselves, pull the meat from the bone, make it taste delicious, and serve it to you.  The ground sirloin in our Americano tacos comes from beef that’s been raised locally and grass-fed, the way Mother Nature intended.   That’s what farm to table is all about.  And what doesn’t come from local farms, like the Pacific Cod we use to make our Yucatecan style fish tacos, is sustainably caught so that the next generation of Taco Punks can grow up to enjoy it too.  

                                                     Delicious tacos, made by hand.

Is this easy?  No, it’s not.  At Taco Punk, there are no short cuts.  Every day, we create hand-made tortillas from corn, masa and flour.  We roll each one into dough balls and press them into tortillas moments before they are served to you.  All of our salsas are made from scratch with fresh ingredients, and they’re yours to enjoy whenever you purchase anything from our menu.  From the safrito black beans and saffron rice, to the guacamole and queso, it’s all made by hand, one ingredient at a time.  We know you’ll taste the difference, and we know that you’ll like it.

                                                            How we press our tortillas.

You’ll never find a $0.99 taco at Taco Punk.  There’s no such thing as a “dollar menu” in our restaurant.  That’s because when it comes to making Louisville’s best tacos, we put our money where our mouth is.  It’s worth it to us, and we hope it’s worth it to you too.  Come in and taste the difference.

-By John B., Taco Grunt and Social Media Writer