gutfud – the food, es ist gut

When the major landmark of a town is a state prison and there are signs on either side of the highway saying “DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS,” I generally keep driving, shank you very much.

But after several trips through Avenal, I finally picked up the courage to stop. It was my burning desire to sample a taqueria and my fearless demeanor of living on the edge.

We picked Los Primos Bakery and pulled in. Immediately we were hit with the aroma of fresh, sweet, baked goods. Mmm.

The shop is a combination of a bakery, convenience store, carniceria and dining counter.

There was some initial stumbling over our food order, and thankfully their English was better than our Spanish, but we tried! From the carniceria:

2 asada tacos – $1.50 each
2 carnitas tacos – $1.50 each
2 fish tacos – $1.50 each

From the convenience counter: 1 large bottle of Mexican cola in the glass bottle, with yummy cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, I think it was $2. And two packets of Mexican caramels, these were $1.29 each.

The meat tacos were very generous, served with cilantro, onion and wedges of lime. The fish tacos, being the same price, were a little smaller, with cabbage and onion, and a finely mixed simple salsa. The fish tacos also took a little longer to prepare, which the counter woman confirmed we were willing to wait. It was just five minutes extra, and hardly noticeable once you’re chowing on the asada and carnitas.
In future trips, we will tend towards the meat tacos. It was no molecular gastronomy experience, unsurprisingly, but for that price and the friendliness of the folks working there, we were very pleased.

Total bill, just a smidge over $13 and we feared pending food coma once we realized we’d just consumed six tortillas each after we split up all the shared tacos.

The interior was tidy and clean, with one long picnic style table inside for communal dining. It was mid-afternoon and nobody communed with us, except the folks working there. The man behind the counter, I think his name was Ferris, was extremely friendly.
After we’d paid up, I finally noticed the freezer section of Mexican popcicles and sort of went apeshit over them. What can I say, I like popcicles. At least three different brands, offering about a dozen flavors.
We settled on a rice pudding popcicle, and I don’t know whether it was our enthusiasm, or if the guy just wanted to get rid of us, but the dessert was on him. SO NICE! We nommed it all the way to the Reef Station, if there were any state prison hitchhikers, we didn’t even see them.

The final note to this story: we completely forgot to get the name of the place, and we paid cash, so we had no record of the business name. I’ve just spent at least 30 minutes using a combination of google maps, yelp, general search engines and a phone call to the True Value Hardware business across the street on Skyline to finally figure out we ate at Los Primos Bakery. Hell if I’m going to let some food photos and super nice people of Avenal go to waste.

Los Primos
744 Skyline Blvd
Avenal, CA 93204