Taco’s Lab in Winter Park conducts an experiment in weird science

I’m unsure who Taco is but he has a lab in Winter Park. It’s not former UCF basketball star Tacko Fall: missing a K. Nor is it 1980s pop star Taco Ockerse. That’d be crackers — he’d be putting carnitas on the Ritz. After three visits and some digging around, I remain stumped. The mysterious possessive in the name Taco’s Lab remains a mystery, even if the entire identity of this west Winter Park taqueria seems lifted from Boca Raton-based Taco Labs.

This said, there’s little other mystery to the tiny box of a taco joint itself beyond its location — you could almost frisbee a tortilla into the Hunger Street Tacos parking lot. Taco’s Lab consists of a counter, a handful of tables, one front-of-house expeditor and one busy bee manning a visible flat-top. Not a white coat or beaker in sight, though the place drips with scientific wordplay.

There is a taco called El Patrón Lab Sample (yes, the boss’s results are back from Quest, and we’ve put them in a tortilla!). If that doesn’t whet the appetite, how about a veggie taco named Green Lab Specimen? It’s relentless.

What did taste like a green lab specimen was a “jalapeño margarita” ($11.99). More like classic lemon-lime Gatorade: cleaning supply-ish, overly sweet and no hint of tequila. On the menu, it simply reads “margarita,” sans caveat — and caveat emptor! — there’s likely no liquor.

If you want a real margarita, you can walk several blocks to Superica. And on our second visit, between ordering and eating, we could have. The place was mobbed. Fast became slow casual. We had returned on the tacoest of Tuesdays in hopes that the groupthink tomfoolery might add a bit of something-something to the meal.

The sign reads, “Where every taco is an experiment in flavor,” but not every experiment yields results. Beware, villagers; the Fish Lab taco of the month ($5.99) was downright Frankensteinian: an admirable piece of well-cooked but unidentified fish topped with cheese, pineapple, more cheese and a sweet, milky, uncomfortably specimen-like sauce. When asked, my companion gulped hard: “It’s OK.” It was not.

What is truly weird about all this science is some of it works. That El Patrón ($5.99)? Crispy fish filet, costra-cheese, avocado, chipotle sauce and pickled red onion in a corn tortilla — I’ve eaten far worse things. A so-so Tulum Experiment ($5.99) with shrimp offered a similar setup, plus corn — these are flavors that (hypothetically) work. Although guacamole ($8.99) had a gloss reminiscent of store-bought it, too, was flavorful. Salsa is genuinely good. You can eat here. But overall?

Look, the tortillas are bland (and far less corny than this review), non-seafood proteins leaned dry, cheese is everywhere, and the wilder experiments are overwrought. This stated, and as the crowds attest, people seem to like the place. Just not me. I’m a street taco man — a classic kind of hombre — and while the traditional tacos ($4.99) are passable, best to keep it basic elsewhere. You go to Taco’s Lab for over-the-top pizzazz. It has a Taco Bell appeal that will undoubtedly resonate with those unopposed to the idea of huffing Nacho Cheese Doritos dust.

Across visits, I found Taco’s Lab a roller coaster of deep troughs and modest peaks. What was consistent was the attentiveness and friendliness of staff, decent chips and dips, and affordability: an in-a-pinch affair. That it literally exists between a Chipotle and Hunger Street Tacos is all you need to know about where Taco’s Lab sits on the stuff-in-a-tortilla spectrum.

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This article appears in Aug 13-18, 2025.