I was in Hank’s a few Tuesdays ago. Hank’s is a bar in San Miguel de Allende. And I think, without a doubt, the best bar in San Miguel de Allende.

Not only is Hank’s the best bar in town, it is also one of the very best restaurants. So it always bothers me that Hank’s lowers its culinary standards in the way it celebrates Taco Tuesday.

The taco that Hank’s celebrates is the hard shell taco, a strange taco, a crispy taco, but once upon a time, a long time ago, it was the only taco that I’d ever eaten. And an important step in my education, my personal history, and my appreciation of Mexican food.

Let me share something I wrote a long time ago:

The first Mexican dish I ever ate was a taco. Well, OK, this taco wasn’t really Mexican. But I thought it was. I was sure it was. It said so on the box it came in.

I should have guessed from the name. El Paso is in Texas, dummy, not Mexico. But oh, did I like it. You could buy just the taco shells or a complete taco kit and, equipped with one of those Old El Paso boxes, I could boldly say, “I’ll cook dinner tonight, Honey.”

I always prepared them the same way. Because that’s what the box told me to do. Ground beef with an envelope of seasoning mix, lettuce, tomato, grated cheese (Medium Cheddar was my choice), and, my signature touch, hot sauce (three drops of Tabasco that accidentally became six or seven). Also, accidentally, I would always seem to break one out of every four taco shells.

Then the chains arrived in my Canadian hometown. Taco Bell and, soon after, a couple of pretenders. As a die-hard food snob, I only went into Taco Bell once; it was late, I was drunk, and it was a Mexican guy called Gil Cruz that suggested it so that made it a little more OK. And my lack of attendance was despite the fact that one out of ten Americans apparently eats at Taco Bell once a week. Glen Bell (now you know where the chain’s name came from) almost but not quite claimed to have invented that U-shaped, deep fried taco in his biography.

But the crispy taco shell may have actually had its beginnings with a man born in San Miguel’s neighboring city of Celaya. Juvencio Maldonado opened New York’s first Mexican Restaurant, Xóchitl, in the city’s theater district in 1936. Jeffrey Pilcher tells the story in his book, Planet Taco:

”A technological visionary as well as a restaurant impresario, Maldonado patented the first mechanical taco fryer. On his arrival in New York, he had listed his trade as electrician, and he demonstrated technical ingenuity in his patent application, filed in 1947 and registered three years later. His “form for frying tortillas to make fried tacos” consisted of vertically stacked holders in a metal frame that could be immersed in oil and then unfolded to release the tortillas.”

In 1976, I finally made it to Mexico. Suddenly single again and in search of sun, sand and cervezas. Plus a very authentic taco.

On my second day, I headed for the back streets, where people in tank tops and cut-off jeans feared to tread. There I found my little hole in the wall and there I grazed the menu in search of my very authentic taco. But there were no tacos on the menu. And none on the menu the next day when I ventured deeper into those back streets. I was told Mexican restaurants didn’t sell tacos, street carts sold tacos. But I couldn’t find a street cart in this resort town. Not in the middle of the afternoon, anyway.

On the fourth day, I decided to change my focus from tacos to women in tank tops and cut-offs. I went into a place called Carlos and Charlie’s that was overflowing with women overflowing in tank tops and picked up the menu. It looked like a chain restaurant menu but I was safe, I was in Mexico, far from the eyes of my foodie friends. It was a long menu but down near the bottom I found the word taco, actually found it twice, one that came with steak, another with shrimp. No ground beef. Not really authentic I thought. But steak or shrimp versus burger. Even though you got three of each, I ordered both.

What I got were the limpest, skimpiest, lily-white tortillas wrapped around some imaginative innards. These weren’t tacos I thought. Tasty…but not tacos. Tacos are crispy, crunchy, with tans like those tank-topped ladies.

In the early eighties I finally learned the truth about tacos. My teacher was a guy called Barry Ashley, a New Yorker who had moved to Toronto and occasionally worked for me as a photographer. Barry opened Toronto’s first (I think) mostly Mexican restaurant called The Peasant’s Larder in a dodgy part of town where only a New Yorker might be gutsy enough to go. Barry was the big enchilada when it came to Mexican cuisine. Barry taught me the difference between Mexican food and Mexican-American food. Barry told me why he sold two different tacos but that the hard shell ones were about as Mexican as George Hamilton playing Zorro.

So why does this San Miguel bar called Hank’s celebrate this not so Mexican creation called by the boring American name hard shell taco but the much more intriguing San Miguel name tacos dorados. It’s because of a guy called Bob Thieman, the guy who owns Hank’s and who is, perhaps, San Miguel’s smartest restauranteur, a guy smart enough to know, if hard shell tacos brings more people through the door, you celebrate Taco Tuesday.

Back to where we started, me having hard shell tacos in Hank’s on a recent Tuesday, I was talking to Miriam. Miriam is one of Bob Thieman’s servers. Like all of Hank’s servers, she is extraordinarily good at what she does. Like all good servers, she only has moments not minutes to chat. But she did find time to tell me that, after Friday and Saturday, Tuesday was Hank’s busiest day.

I am a food snob. A nose in the stratosphere prig when it comes to food. And that sometimes presents problems. Major problems. It’s the reason I give for usually not ordering tacos on Taco Tuesday at Hank’s. But last Tuesday I did.

We were five guys having lunch and we all talked about ordering something other than those tacos but three of us stuck to the tradition. I was one of them. And I thought they were good. As good as I’ve ever had hard shell tacos. Ample fat content in the beef. A generous amount of cheese. Iceberg lettuce. The right amount of chile in the red sauce.

I even learned something from my friend Bill. If you don’t want to wear hard shell tacos, knife and fork them. Who says you can’t teach old guys new tricks?

The end of this tale has a very happy ending. And la cuenta is rarely something that brings joy. My two not very trendy but very traditional tacos were a total of 80 pesos. In the best bar in San Miguel. Enough said.

You’ll find Hank’s New Orleans Cafe and Oyster Bar at Hidalgo #12 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.