Quesabirria, and a Sun the Wrong Color

Name: Quesabirria, and a Sun the Wrong Color
Item: Muchas Gracias Mexican Food
Rating: 3.0
Author: Mr. Librarian

August 5, 2026 · 📍 Vancouver, Washington · 👁 — views

3/5Glad I went?

The dining room and order counter at Muchas Gracias Mexican Food — deep red walls, a black-and-white checkerboard tile floor, three lit digital menu screens overhead with one advertising birria fries, a Pepsi fountain and cooler at the left, a handwritten New Hours notice taped in the service window, staff in red polo shirts working behind the glass, a doorway marked PICK-UP HERE, and one customer eating alone in a booth

There was smoke over the whole state on Wednesday, the way there is most Augusts now, and it does something to the light in the evening that you notice before you notice anything else. I ate before it got interesting. Dinner was quesabirria tacos at Muchas Gracias Mexican Food, the one on NE 76th Street in Vancouver, Washington, at about half past seven — a plain red-walled counter place in a strip off the Orchards end of town, checkerboard tile and a row of booths, staff in red polos, order at the counter and collect at the window beside it.

The quesabirria

Four of them, folded in corn tortillas that had been through the birria fat long enough to come out deep orange and crisp along the fold, shredded beef inside with raw white onion and cilantro, lime wedged in between. They're good. The tortilla does the thing you want it to do, which is hold together right up until it doesn't, and the beef inside is properly shredded and properly wet rather than dry strands sitting in a dry shell.

The consomé is the part I have a note about. It comes in its own cup to dip into, and at other places I've had it, that broth is the whole argument for ordering quesabirria over any other taco on the board — dark, fatty, deeply reduced, the thing you'd drink on its own. This one is thinner than that. You can see it in the cup: a clear orange rather than a slick, and it pours more like a salsa than a consomé. It still tastes good. It just isn't the version that makes you sit up.

Four quesabirria tacos in a clear clamshell on yellow paper, corn tortillas fried orange in birria fat and filled with shredded beef, white onion and cilantro with lime wedges, next to a clear cup of thin orange consomé and a cola with a red straw — The consomé, on the left. Thinner than it wants to be.

That's the shape of the whole meal, honestly. The sauces here are fine. Not one of them is bad and not one of them is the reason you'd come back — nothing on this table was worth dying for, and I mean that as a description rather than an insult. It's a solid taco at a counter that will hand it to you in about four minutes.

The other thing that came out was a torta, split in half — a bolillo roll with chopped, red-marinated griddled meat, shredded lettuce, avocado spread and pico, both halves face up in the clamshell. Tortas run $10.89 to $11.59 here depending on what goes in them.

A torta cut in half on yellow paper in a takeout clamshell, both halves face up, a bolillo roll filled with chopped red-marinated griddled meat, shredded lettuce, avocado spread and pico de gallo, on a table above a black-and-white checkerboard tile floor — The torta, halved. Tortas are $10.89–$11.59.

What does Muchas Gracias cost?

Not much, and also not nothing, which is the thing about eating out now. Street tacos are $3.80 each or four for $11.29. A cheese quesadilla is $6.79 and a bean and cheese burrito is $7.79, which is about as cheap as a hot meal gets in Clark County anymore. But the combination plates all sit between $14.29 and $16.49 — a sixteen ounce drink included — and carne asada fries are $16.29, and a large agua fresca is $4.70. Nobody's getting robbed. Nobody's getting a bargain either. That's just where the floor is now.

A wall-mounted digital menu screen headed Combination, showing twenty numbered plate combinations with photographs — tostadas, enchiladas, tacos, asada, machaca, carnitas, chile rellenos and tamales — priced between 14.29 and 16.49, each including a sixteen ounce drink — Combination plates, $14.29–$16.49.

A second digital menu screen listing burritos, tacos, street tacos, rolled tacos, enchiladas, tostadas, quesadillas, tortas, nachos and fries, kids meals, drinks and desserts with prices, mounted above a doorway marked PICK-UP HERE on a red wall — Everything else. Burritos start at $7.79.

Birria is clearly the thing they're pushing at the moment — there's a birria plate and birria fries advertised on the big screens as new, and a hand-lettered whiteboard propped in the service window listing quesabirria, birria plate, birria fries and birria pizza under a starburst reading NEW ITEM. Next to it, in the same handwriting, in English and then again in Spanish, is a notice about new hours: open until midnight, Monday through Sunday. ¡Muchas Gracias! it signs off, which in this case is both the thanks and the name over the door. Both are taped up in the service window, left of the register, under the screen advertising the birria fries.

Are the quesabirria tacos at Muchas Gracias worth ordering?

Yes, if you're already out this end of Vancouver and you want a good taco quickly and you don't need it to be an event. That's a real recommendation and I want to be clear that it is one. It's just not the other kind. There is Mexican food in this town I will get in the car and drive twenty-five minutes for — Cactus Ya Ya is a five in my book and I've been making that drive for years — and this isn't that, and it isn't trying to be. Muchas Gracias is a small Northwest chain doing a competent, fast, mildly generous version of the thing. Ordering it made my Wednesday better. It did not rearrange my week.

And then the sun

It was the drive afterwards that I'll actually remember. The wildfire smoke sitting over Washington had turned the whole sky a flat, dirty peach, and by a quarter past eight the sun coming down over the Walmart lot on Fourth Plain was a hard red-orange disc you could look straight at — small, sharp-edged, sitting in the trees like something dropped there. Smoke does that. It scatters the blue out of the light until what's left is the far end of the spectrum, and you get a sunset that would be beautiful if you didn't know what it was made of.

A deep red-orange sun low in a flat peach-coloured smoky sky above a line of dark fir trees, seen across a supermarket parking lot with numbered grocery pickup stalls, parked cars and a person in a hi-vis vest at an open hatchback — A quarter past eight, Fourth Plain Boulevard. You could look right at it.

A sunset that would be beautiful if you didn't know what it was made of.

The practical bit

Muchas Gracias Mexican Food — 11500 NE 76th St, Vancouver, WA 98662, in the strip at the Orchards end of NE 76th. 📍 Get directions

Hours: the hand-lettered notice by the register announces new hours running to midnight, Monday through Sunday; the chain's own listing for this location says 8am–midnight daily. Either way, it is open late — which is a real part of the appeal.

Worth knowing: order at the counter, collect at the window beside it. Street tacos $3.80 each or four for $11.29; tortas $10.89–$11.59; combination plates $14.29–$16.49 with a drink. Birria is the current push — plate, fries and pizza versions are all on the handwritten board, not just the tacos.

Worth it? Three stars — glad I went. The quesabirria is good and the consomé is thinner than the ones that have spoiled me elsewhere; the sauces across the table are all perfectly fine and none of them is worth a detour. If you're nearby, order it. If you're across town, the five-star scale on this site says worth crossing a city for, and this isn't that — it's the honest, useful middle, and there ought to be more places on a shelf like this one that get to sit there without it reading as a complaint.

food mexican quesabirria birria tacos consomé torta street tacos carne asada fries muchas gracias chains orchards vancouver washington pacific northwest wildfire smoke