Eating More Tortas at East Aurora's Tortisimas

While the torta is almost always found on typical taqueria menus around town, Mexico City-style torterias, with their full juice bars, are happily becoming much more common in and around Denver. When travelling in your local Mexican-centric neighborhood, it's hard not to stumble upon one.

There is nothing quite like the yin and yang of an obnoxiously large sandwich of greasy-grilled meats and freshly blended fruit and vegetable drinks. And given the success of Denver's original torta spot, Tortugas, which seems to always have folks lined up by the dozens, it's not a surprise that torteria numbers are on the rise.

My latest stop was Tortisimas, which my wife stumbled across doing God-knows-only-what deep in the heart of Aurora on Chambers and Mississippi. Tortisimas is another virtual copy of Tortugas, with the same logo on the door (a silhouette of Mexico City's El Angel statue) and appropriately naco touches like this:

While I appreciate tasteless decor as much as the next guy, what I was really there for was a sandwich. So were my boys, who, now two, have learned to ask for tortas by name. It brings a tear of joy to my eye to see them tackle with such ferocity a sandwich bigger than their own heads. 

I had a torta with chorizo, chicken and eggs. It was good. It wasn't anything spectacular, but one can't really complain about a big hunk of bread, avocado, cheese and greasy meats--at least until the next day.

My wife's torta was overflowing with cheese, chorizo and mushrooms. The earthy, thick mushrooms cut through the grease of the chorizo very well, making for an excellent and unique combination. Not quite like mushrooms al pastor I was virtually tricked into eating once, though in some ways better because instead of no meat, there was meat.

From my small sample of Tortisimas, I would judge it to be a good torteria and I would be glad to have it in my neighborhood. It isn't exactly destination-torteria worthy, unless you happen to be coming from Kansas and East Aurora is your first contact with civilization. And if East Aurora is your first contact with civilization--well, just be glad you can get a good Mexican sandwich while you're there. But for us locals, the Denver-area has many other options. So what are you waiting for? Go out and support your local torteria now.