Tamales Unicos de Cuernavaca

One of my favorite foods during the holidays is tamales!  Unfortunately, I don't get to eat any homemade ones anymore so I'm always on the lookout for some good ones.  Tamales Unicos de Cuernavaca is just a walk up window so be prepared to eat on the go or take it home and chow down.  

They offer 7 different kinds:  cheese, pork, chicken, beef, sweet, vegetable, and corn, but when I got there around midday they only had 3 different kinds.  At $2.25 for one and $22.50 for a dozen, they don't come cheap.  Cash only.

My two favorite tamales are jalapeno cheese and pork.  Unfortunately, they didn't have jalapeno cheese when I went, but at least they had pork.  It was a little disappointing since I heard the jalapeno cheese was a favorite.  Since I was actually on the way to another food spot, I had to nosh on these when I got home so I didn't notice that the red sauce wasn't packed in until too late!  The masa is fluffy and moist, but a tad bit too much.  The pork was spicy and flavorful.  Not as good as All Stars, but I'd go back for some pork ones.

I've never seen a vegetarian tamale unless it's the jalapeno cheese one.  The vegetarian tamale was made with corn, peas, and some type of tomato sauce.  It reminded me of the vegetables in Campbell's alphabet soup.  They probably threw in a vegetarian option because this place sits on the Oakland-Berkeley border.  No wonder this was one of the three that was left - it was pretty weird tasting.  I could barely take a second bite.  Maybe the red sauce would have made this one taste better.

Chicken is one of those tamales flavors I rarely order.  The chicken is often bland and a bit dry.  The one was moist, but the chicken needed some flavor, especially after biting into the pork one.

Address:                  Tamales Unicos de Cuernavaca
                                 5751 Market St.
                                 Oakland, CA
 

Type:                        Mexican

Popular chomps:      pork tamale
                                 chicken tamale
                                 cheese and jalapeno tamale
                                 burrito

Chomp worthy:       pork tamale