Brett Suzuki is a purist. He sells pasture-raised beef at Arigato Market but he will never serve you a carne asada taco. When you own the only Japanese taco stand/butcher shop in town—maybe in the world?—you have to take a stand on cultural appropriation.
White flour tortillas, or something like them, the theories go, were possibly developed in northern Mexico by Spanish Jews (or Muslims) during the time of the Inquisition, adapting their own foods to the conditions of the colony they were lamming it in.
The ground beef is featured on the aforementioned tomato-meatball risotto taco and the cheeseburger taco too, which behaves a bit like the Akutagawa plate from Wrigleyville’s Rice’N Bread. I can’t see a corn tortilla standing up to loaded tacos such as these, but the flour tortillas tend to overwhelm some of the more delicate ones, like the spicy poke tuna, whose fresh soy-derived brininess is smothered by a double pillow of white rice and white flour, and which is only relieved with a bit of surgery around the edges of the flatbread. Others, such as a spicy deviled-egg salad taco, the chicken curry, and the crispy pork tonkatsu, command compulsory scarfing.
1407 W. Grand 312-639-4847arigatomarket.com
