In time-honored Mexican restaurant fashion, every meal begins with a big bowl of tortilla chips and a small one of pleasant salsa, thick with roasted chiles and cilantro. However, the menu offers English translations and pointing to what you want works just fine. Although servers are hospitable and eager to please, they’re not always comfortable in English. Striped banquettes circle the room beneath murals of romantic rancho scenes. Tables draped in bright cloths and topped with clear vinyl line up in long rows along the length of the hall. Today, diners are greeted by an open kitchen, faced in a patchwork of colorful tiles, as they enter the front door. When the bar next door closed, Tacos al Carbón expanded to 150 seats and became a popular spot for Latino celebrations. The restaurant began in 1983 as a 12-table hole-in-the-wall, serving cold sodas and tacos. Still, the food stands on its own, and Tacos al Carbón is just as satisfying and much easier on the ears on a quiet weeknight. Just steer clear of the DayGlo green margaritas ($10) unless you like your drinks sweet enough to make your teeth ache. Mexican beer is sold by the bucket of six ($30) as well as the bottle ($5.50). The bar serves a fruity house-made sangria ($6.95) and a mean michelada ($8), essentially a spicy bloody Mary made with beer and lime. On Thursday nights, a big brass band – complete with tuba – plays raucous banda music so loud that parents cup their hands over children’s ears to muffle the blast. On weekends, it pulses with the guitars, trumpets and fiddles of Mariachi Azteca and doesn’t close until 3 a.m.

Located next to Mi Pueblo supermarket in a recently refurbished shopping center at Story and King in East San Jose, it’s a loud and lively restaurant that calls itself “La Casa del Mariachi.” We have a multitude of grab-and-go taquerias and burrito shops, but only a handful of authentic regional Mexican restaurants worthy of a night on the town. Yet Mexican food gets short shrift, despite the fact that more than one in five Santa Clara County residents trace their roots south of the border. Name a foreign culture, and there’s likely a restaurant that serves its cuisine tucked away in one of the strip malls between Palo Alto and Gilroy.

One of the joys of living in Silicon Valley is the opportunity to travel the globe with knife and fork.

Tacos al carbon food truck menu