It's best-of season, which means restaurants are either voraciously soliciting votes or endlessly celebrating their new titles. Dallas has a winner on Bon Appetit's list of America's Best New Restaurants 2016, and it's one that might surprise you: Trompo, the no-frills taco spot that opened in April on an unassuming block of Singleton Boulevard.

Bon Appetit had glowing praise for the taqueria:

There are no-frill hole-in-the-wall restaurants, and then there’s Trompo. Next door to a tire shop, this fluorescent-lit room could feasibly fit a few tables, but there are none (something about the building code), so the only furniture is a couple of stools and a small table on top of which sits a mini fridge of Cokes. And yet, behind the cut-out window where orders are taken, owner Luis Olvera oversees the creation of some of the best tacos we've had all year. There are three simple but surreal tacos: deep-pink al pastor, which reaches its crispy-juicy peak thanks to the trompo (the rotating vertical spit); bistek (beef); and surprisingly good vegetarian paneer-poblano, all set on house-made corn tortillas and sprinkled with onions and cilantro. Even the quesadilla is a must-order, an open-face flour tortilla topped with the same taco fixings plus melty fresh mozzarella. A splash of one of the house-made hot sauces — green (avocado, jalapeño, serrano) or red (chile de árbol and tomatillo) — really ties the room together, does it not?



When Bon Appetit calls Trompo an "an absolutely zero-frills taqueria," they are not wrong. It's sparse in there, but tacos this good need no fanfare. This is one heap of praise that is certainly warranted.

Trompo is the only Dallas eatery to make the cut for this list, but Texas fared decently overall, with Foreign Correspondents (Houston), Emmer & Rye (Austin) and Hotel Emma (San Antonio) also making the list.

