Lamb Soup And New Media At R&R Tacqueria

The legend of the R&R Tacqueria on Rte 175 is growing, and it is entirely deserved.  We went back for lamb soup and tacos, and I don't think there is a better bowl of soup in Howard County.

Rich with flavor, generously spiced and outfitted with tender meat.  R&R turns out a perfect soup where the spoonfuls differ as you pull of lamb or vegetables, but the bowl comes together in a strikingly red broth.  The deep broth shows off R&R talent.  There is a combination greater than the parts.  That's the trick that separates a real dish from just stuff simmered together in a pot.

And it's $5 for soup and a taco.  Why aren't you eating lunch at R&R today?

Check out the soup -- along with some other items like huarache and chile relleno that have been talked up in a series of articles sparked by the WSJ mention.  Tyler Cowen posted about all three, calling the huarache the best that he has even eaten -- including in Mexico.  We actually were ordering at R&R when the owner got a copy of the WSJ, and it was really fun to see him excited by the well-deserved attention.


While we're at it, the recent burst of writing about R&R inspires me to remind everyone about Alberto A. Flores.  Recognizing my own immodesty, I believe that Flores was the well-spring of all the recent accolades about the "tacos at the gas station."

In October 2009, Flores wrote a comment on HowChow about R&R's tacos, and I cited his comment when I first wrote about the place the next month.  That's the etiquette of the new media as I have learned.  Hat tips and links are standard where so many people either do this just for fun or make money from visitors, and many people have graciously cited HowChow when they write about R&R.

That's not the way of the Wall Street Journal.  The WSJ wrote a roundup of five "gas station tacos" joints.  Perhaps the WSJ sent the writer on a five-state trip for a five-paragraph item, but I'll assume for the moment that she quite reasonably found on-line references to "gas stations tacos" and re-reported the facts herself.  I certainly re-reported stories when I worked at the Miami Herald, and we religiously gave no credit to other media if we had confirmed the facts ourselves. 

That's a bummer because the WSJ becomes a fire wall.  Tyler Cowen blogged about R&R and cited the WSJ -- even linking to the writer's personal blog. That sparked Gary on Boarding Area to blog and cite Cowen.  And it inspired the fabulous Todd Kliman who cited Cowen as well.  All these folks played fair because they heard about R&R from the WSJ.  They don't read HowChow.

But it drains some of the new media fun to see R&R in blogs that I enjoy and watch them push the discovery back to the WSJ .  Championing R&R has been one of my favorite parts of HowChow, and it would have been nice to be part of the conversation and to have the hat tips flow back here -- and to Alberto A. Flores.