Our largest tournament bracket to date completed its second round over the weekend. For the uninitiated, I wanted to go big with the latest social venture. There are arguably more places to get tacos in Wichita than any other type of food. When I set out to set up the bracket for Wichita’s Most Liked Taco, I wanted to go big and do something the city has never seen before: A tournament bracket featuring a whopping 128 restaurants, food trucks, and pop-ups around town dishing out tacos was the end result.
The massive list includes nearly every locally owned taco option along with some national chains to fill in the 128 spots. It ranges everywhere from street tacos, fried tacos, Vegan tacos, gourmet tacos, fast food tacos and creative taco options that range from one end of Wichita to the other. It’s 100% Wichita. The best part is I’ve eaten at all 128 spots.
The point of this whole bracket was three-fold and if you don’t like it, tough shit:
- Introduce you all to the incredible number of options many of you may have never heard of.
- Use this platform of Wichita By E.B. to help give some exposure to places that rarely get love elsewhere.
- Have a little fun in the name of Tacos.
Over the past few weeks, readers had their chance to vote on matchups via Facebook and Twitter. Some results shocked me and others didn’t. One even caused a major ruckus. There were some taco options that lost in the second round I think deserve a little more love. Alondra’s Tacos, Taqueria La Chona, Mi Lindo Michoacan, Tacos Chepe, and Birrieria Raymundo were probably victims of not being well-known or publicized enough in the Wichita food community. If you have some time, I highly recommend those five options. The big ruckus was the Paleteria La Reyna vs. Taco Shop matchup. I guess some people don’t find the fun in matching up tacos despite where they are considered “authentic” or “fast food”. The holier than thou attitude was definitely real in the comments. Regardless it’s time to move on to the Third Round and see which tacos will advance to our Savory 16.
REMEMBER, the results of this post don’t necessarily mean they are the best taco but more of which place has the most online support thus Most Liked. So if your favorite place doesn’t win, please cry to your parents….. not me. This all comes down to social media support on Facebook and Twitter where the voting will be held. In the end, I hope you can find some new taco options you may have never heard of or tried! And just like the previous bracket, I will not be voting in any bracket. This will be left strictly to the general audience.
I do have ONE REQUEST. When you vote, ask yourself if you’re voting for what you truly feel is the BEST TACO or if you’re just voting to support said place based on other reasons. You are voting strictly for tacos, not Mexican food…just tacos. There were comments blasting places for not being “authentic enough” or “Mexican”. This is a “Most Liked Taco” poll. The criteria does not involve the style of taco or having to be from a Mexican restaurant. Obviously there is no way to regulate it but I just wanted to throw that out there.
If you’d like to vote, you can find matchups on the Wichita By E.B. Facebook page and our Twitter to vote for your favorite. So with that said, here’s the updated bracket.
Download the full PDF here. And since the bracket is so large, I had to split it up into two images so printing off the file and viewing it that way is the best way.
We went from 128 down to 32, now we continue on down to 16. May the best taco win.
Happy Dining,
Eddy
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