METAIRIE, La. (WGNO) — It’s basically a beauty contest … An award-winning competition to anoint and appoint New Orleans’ Top Taco.

WGNO Good Morning New Orleans features reporter Wild Bill Wood visited Tacos Del Cartel in Metairie ahead of the competition.

Right here, Lauralee Rotchford leads her team of taco athletes like a quarterback at the Super Bowl.

Bill Wood asks, “What makes a taco a Top Taco?”

Lauralee Rotchford says, “A Top Taco is complex, layered with freshest, finest ingredients, and cannot each just one.

The mission here is actually behind the bar.

That’s where they’re mixing up the kind of beverage worthy of washing down a Top Taco.

The right recipe may just be the cocktail in progress — it’s a blackberry basil margarita.

In kitchens across town, they prepare for the full-fledged Top Taco festival, a taco and tequila cocktail-tasting event, at Lafreniere Park in Metairie on Thursday, October 27.

Around here, they tell you the truth.

Money can’t buy happiness.

But it surely can buy tacos.