Home Consumer CLOSED Feeling Like Family at La Familia Mexican Taqueria in Naples

CLOSED Feeling Like Family at La Familia Mexican Taqueria in Naples

La Familia Mexican Taqueria

Updated February 4, 2024.

This restaurant is now listed as TEMPORARILY CLOSED

La Familia Mexican Taqueria (LF)  is a restaurant in East Naples serving Mexican cuisine.

As of this writing, LF has been open for about two years. The owners are from Central Mexico, and the food served at their establishment somewhat reflects Central Mexican Cuisine. The restaurant has a very limited amount of outdoor seating which is not the case for dining in. The menu at LF is somewhat elusive. The restaurant does not have a website or publish a menu on its Facebook page. Fortunately, I asked for a paper copy to bring home.

Menu page 1

Menu page 2

The base of a sope is a lightly fried, thick piece of Masa. The base is topped with refried beans, meat, lettuce, tomatoes, Cotija Cheese and Crema, Crema is also known by the moniker, Mexican sour cream, though this is not entirely accurate. The meat chosen

Guacamole and pico de gallo

was Campechano, typically a mixture of pork and beef. This adds another layer of flavor and texture to the dish. LF uses beef (asada), pork (pastor) and sausage (chorizo) in their campechano. It was delicious and highly recommended. In house-made chips and pico de gallo come gratis as a start to your order. We added guacamole.

Both were excellent and a nice start to the meal.

Sope was the next menu item to try.

Camarones A La Diabla was next.

Camarones a la diabla with rice and refried beans

This dish literally means “shrimp to the devil”. The shrimp are cooked in a sauce of pureed red, dried chilies such as Guajillo, garlic and tomato. The devil refers to the heat in the dish. At LF, this is provided using chipotle peppers, or smoked jalapenos. The sauce is not necessarily hot, but extremely flavorful due to the chipotle used. Refried beans and rice seal the deal. Another delicious, and excellent dish.

We asked our server about some of the other topping selections, specifically Guisados. These are stewed topping selections rather than diced meat or seafood. We were curious about the vegan options, and our server brought us a sample of each to try.

Huitlacoche (foreground) and flor de calabaza (backgroud) tacos

Huitlacoche is a fungus that grows on corn and is considered a delicacy in Mexico. For all you would ever want to know about huitlacoche, go Here (caution, the photos are not for the squeamish!). These tacos, typically prepared with onions and garlic, tasted faintly like mushrooms. Flor de calabaza are squash flowers. The chopped flowers are again simply prepared with onion and garlic. Both of these taco fillings were Terra Incognita to me, and it was nice of our server to let us try them “on the house”. The tortillas are made in-house at LF, which makes all the difference no matter how they’re served. Although interesting, I much prefer non-vegan Mexican dishes.

We finished our meal with an order of quesabirria tacos.

Birria is a stew that originated in Central Mexico. It can be made from lamb, but due to expense and availability, beef is frequently used. It is a luscious and flavorful stew, employing complex spice mixtures including thyme, marjoram, oregano, bay leaf, ginger, cinnamon, tomatoes and dried chilies. There are a couple of different versions of birria, one being a stew. The other is to cook the stew, shred the meat and leave it soaking in its broth similar to a Chicago Italian Beef Sandwich. The stewed meat is “plated’ onto a tortilla with cheese and served with consomme (broth) on the side for dipping or spooning into your taco. Birria has become trendy in the food world as of late and for good reason. The quesabirria tacos at LF are good and will not disappoint.

On a second visit, my dining companion and I tried a few more menu items. We split a gordita.

Chilaquiles with steak

We also split an order of chilaquiles with steak.A gordita is essentially the same as a sope, but instead of a fried flat masa base, uses a fried masa pocket. It was as good as the sope ordered on our first visit, but harder to split. If you’re ordering one of these to split, go for the sope.

Chilaquiles are fried corn tortilla strips topped here with green salsa (salsa verde) and cheese. The chilaquiles were served with rice, refried beans and shredded lettuce. A strip of beef steak completes the dish. Frequently eggs are added to this dish, either scrambled or fried, especially when ordered for a morning meal. The chilaquiles were very good, another highly recommended dish.

Dried shrimp pancakes with cactus and colorado chili sauce

We also sampled the tortitas de camarón con nopales y chile colorado, or dried shrimp pancakes with cactus and red chili sauce. This again was served with rice and refried beans.

To most North Americans, Colorado implies a state. In Mexico, it really means colored red; in this case from chilies. When I ordered this, I thought it would be similar to what I make at home, which are Tortillitas De Camaron, or shrimp fritters. I found the flavors in this menu item dissonant. Perhaps it was the dried shrimp flavors clashing with the nopales here. No matter, you usually can’t be 100% all of the time!

I thought the food at La Familia was very good. They serve fare not found in many local Mexican restaurants or any Mexican restaurant for that matter. This is a family business and it shows, both in the cooking and service. Should you want something different and delicious, La Familia is a good choice, especially with Cinco de Mayo right around the corner.

That’s that for another post on Forks.

La Familia Mexican Taqueria

8795 Tamiami Tr. E.

Naples, FL 34113

(239)331-7358

La Familia Mexican Taqueria Website

La Familia Mexican Taqueria Facebook Page

Open 11AM-3PM Monday-Wednesday; 11AM-8PM Thursday-Saturday; Closed Sunday. All major credit cards accepted.

[vc_message message_box_color=”blue”]Peter Horan, Southwest Florida Forks, posted on SouthFloridaReporter.comMay 7, 2022

Republished with permission

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