Everyone has heard of Fenmore’s Taco Club. Readers wrote to ask whether the food lives up to the reputation, so I walked out to 5060 Newport Avenue and ordered the whole signature menu. Here it is, worst to first.

The Anomaly · 3/10

Ten gold, the priciest thing on the board. Aetheric-glazed roast, gold cheese, lich-pepper sauce. The roast underneath is genuinely good, but nobody trusts it to be, so they drown it: a glaze too sweet to fight, a cheese there only to be looked at, and a lich-pepper sauce that leaves a cold numbing burn loitering long after you wanted it gone. Ten gold for three ingredients performing for three different audiences. Order it if you like to be dared.

Slow-Roasted Wyvern Brisket · 5/10

Nine gold, and the taco the counter will not stop recommending. It is not bad. The brisket is cooked long and genuinely tender. But it is fatty in a way that begs for a sharper foil than the soft tortilla gives it, and by the third bite it has become one rich, heavy, unbroken note with nowhere left to go. A perfectly decent taco you will have forgotten by the walk home.

The Grove Taco · 7/10

Six gold, the cheapest on the board. Forest-spirit greens, moonbloom cheese, whispering herb oil. Nothing fire-forged about it, and it does not pretend otherwise. Bright dressed greens, a soft floral cheese that knows to stay quiet, an oil that ties it together. It is the dish most likely to make you feel well rather than merely impressed, and in this season that is worth something.

Flame-Kissed Basilisk Carnitas · 9/10

Seven gold, the one that fills my letters. Smoked pepperleaf crema, and tortillas pressed by hand to the order. I will say it plainly: the tortillas alone are worth the walk, warm and blistered and faintly smoky, the finest I have had in this city. The basilisk is charred at the edges and rich without the leaden weight of the brisket, and the pepperleaf crema cuts it exactly where it needs cutting. It lost the top spot by a hair and no more.

The Dragonfire Taco · 9.5/10

Eight gold, and the taco that finally earns the whole overheated reputation. Scorched wyvern meat charred hard at the edges and still tender at the center, starfyre salsa that actually crackles and then leaves like a well-mannered guest, pepper relish giving it a floor of sweetness to stand on. I ordered a second before I finished the first, which is the only review I fully trust.

So: skip The Anomaly, and do not let the counter talk you into the brisket. Get the Grove Taco if you want to eat well and cheaply, the basilisk carnitas for those tortillas alone, and the Dragonfire Taco if you want to understand why the whole city will not stop talking about this place.

Topaz Toepads is the Chronicle’s food critic. He pays for his own meals and, on this occasion, for all five of them. Complaints, recommendations, and dares may be sent by owl.