Mexican [food] is perhaps the most misunderstood cuisine on Earth.
– Anthony Bourdain
Spinach quesadillas at Manny’s Uptown
Beef fajita nachos at Mi Cocina
[Warning: this post may induce cravings for Mexican food and/or TexMex.]
After cheese, Robie and I believe Mexican cuisine and TexMex are the two most important food groups on the pyramid. Because while we know the difference between them, we adore them both equally. Like children.
With so many restaurants in Dallas serving up delicious TexMex, for years we ate at our favorite haunts. Before the Greenville Avenue location closed, we dined regularly at Blue Goose. On sunny afternoons we grabbed a patio table at Mi Cocina in Lakewood. When we needed comfort food, we went to Manny’s Uptown on Mockingbird or walked to El Vecino at White Rock Village. And at least once a month we sauntered into Resident Taqueria for their specialty tacos and crispy-bottomed queso fundido. Because the best thing about TexMex is the ooey, gooey cheese in every dish.
When it came time to leave Texas and visit friends and relatives scattered across Arkansas, Florida and Georgia, Robie and I decided to turn the three-week road trip into a tour of Mexican restaurants across the American South. And while we focused on the everyday kind of places we passed along the highway, we kept the ground rules simple.
At every restaurant we would order queso and a beef fajita quesadilla. If the restaurant offered only ground beef in their quesadilla (a sad thing to do to cheese and tortilla really, but it happens ☹) then we’d opt for chicken. The judging was straightforward. For the quesadilla, we asked:
- Was there a good balance between cheese and filling?
- Had the tortilla been properly toasted with lovely little brown spots?
- And did the restaurant remember to include our order of jalapeños on the side? (Fresh jalapeños preferred but pickled fine if that’s all they had).
For the queso, we only wanted to know one thing: did the restaurant serve anything other than the chemistry experiment gone bad that is processed cheese product. Finally, Robie and I agreed there would be style points given for ambiance and restaurant décor. Plus, being suckers for a good story we thought it would be fun to include any compelling backstories we discovered along the way.
So after signing the paperwork that left us officially homeless, Robie and I departed Dallas on a Friday morning and drove east on I-30 focused on where to find our next fix of TexMex. And the moment we crossed State Line Road in Arkansas, we pulled off the highway and turned into the parking lot of El Chico Restaurant.
Once a Dallas staple, only a handful of El Chicos remain sprinkled around the Metroplex in Pantego, Richland Hills and Rockwall. According to their website, El Chico’s history began when Adelaida Cuellar and her family emigrated to Texas and debuted her homemade tamales at the Kaufman County fair. And when they became a hit with the hungry ranchers, Adelaida started a neighborhood restaurant with the help of several of her sons.
Dallas’ first El Chico opened on Oak Lawn in 1940 and helped lead the fast-spreading spin on Mexican food that would become known around the world as TexMex. The second Dallas eatery launched six years later in Lakewood followed closely by Ft. Worth’s first El Chico the next year. Expanding rapidly, the restaurant chain quickly spread across the Southwest while adding canning and frozen food operations.
In October 1964, El Chico’s open-air café inside the State Fair of Texas welcomed John Wayne. In July 1966, El Chico accepted an invitation from Princess Grace to cater a dinner in Monte Carlo. At the grand opening of El Chico’s first restaurant in Georgia, the Cuellar family presented then-Governor Jimmy Carter with a sombrero. And in 1985, El Chico cooked at the White House Congressional Barbeque for Nancy and Ronald Reagan.
But the restaurant chain’s storied past changed forever on the night of Friday, January 21, 1984, when admitted alcoholic, Rene Saenz, left work promptly at five to trade his Houston office chair for an El Chico barstool. For nearly three hours Saenz ordered what he later described as “a lot of scotch and waters” before departing the restaurant a little before 8 p.m. Moments later Saez ran a red light killing Larry Poole, the driver of a car turning left on a green arrow at the intersection. At the hospital, police noticed Saez was wobbly, mumbling and smelled of alcohol. A breath test confirmed he had a blood alcohol content of 0.18, three hundredths above the legal limit at the time and a whopping 0.10 over by today’s standards.
When Poole’s parents sued the El Chico Corporation in a wrongful death suit, they claimed the restaurant knowingly served alcohol to an intoxicated Saez. And when the Texas Supreme Court ruled that all establishments serving alcohol had a responsibility to prevent intoxicated individuals from causing harm, had a public duty not to serve intoxicated individuals, and could be held liable for injuries or death caused by intoxicated patrons, El Chico contended that the law was too burdensome, and that compliance was outside their capabilities.
It was the wrong argument to make during the Mothers Against Drunk Drivers campaign that reduced the legal blood alcohol content and hiked the minimum drinking age.
But with a couple hours of driving still to go, Robie and I kept our El Chico order to food getting two quesadillas, one beef and one chicken, to go with the white processed cheese dip that came with our requested side of jalapeños (pickled).
The quesadillas were good. There was a crisp crunch to the browned tortillas, and the filling had a good proportion of meat to cheese. The chicken was moist and well-seasoned, and the beef had a gentle toothiness that was just the right texture. But the décor in the place looked like it hadn’t changed in decades. Perhaps because like the former El Chico on Central Expressway in Richardson my friends and I frequented in high school, the restaurant was still trying to return to the halcyon days of the early ‘80s.
Lunch a few days later at El Jimador in Hot Springs Village was a group affair as Robie and I were joined by my parents and a pair of longtime family friends. Here, the queso was again processed and the beef quesadilla so crammed full of onions, bell peppers and tomatoes that had the requested jalapeños had made it out of the kitchen, there was no room in the overstuffed tortilla for them. But most unusual was that despite the promise of “melted cheese,” the queso in the quesadilla was nowhere to be found.
And it seemed a shame that the restaurant didn’t share their origin story since El Jimador’s presence inside a large, gated retirement community in central Arkansas seemed noteworthy. But while nothing about the red booths and orange walls felt particularly Mexican, the staff’s friendly service and good company made up for any lack of restaurant ambiance.
On our next leg of the trip, Robie and I drove through the backroads of northwestern Mississippi stopping just south of Jackson. At a place called Mi Cabrito off Highway 49 in Richland, I seriously contemplated ordering the wuilas (roasted quail) before forcing myself to flip the menu and read the quesadilla options. And once there, I was convinced we should get the Cabrito Quesadilla since we were, after all, sitting inside a restaurant called My Goat.
The name sounded ripe for another great story, but if there was one, Robie and I didn’t uncover it. Despite our inquiry to the chef when he came out to take our order personally, he declined to elaborate and only mentioned how our arrival in advance of the dinner rush allowed him a brief opportunity to step out from behind the kitchen.
Determined to stick to the game plan, Robie and I ordered queso (yellow Velveeta) and a beef fajita quesadilla. Following a gentle reminder to our real server, the requested side of pickled jalapeños were produced, and we happily noted that Mi Cabrito’s quesadilla included cheese. But the generous helping of onions and peppers inside the folded tortilla overpowered the delicate flavors of cheese and meat.
Still, Robie and I enjoyed the restaurant’s hand-carved wooden booths with colorfully painted scenes of sunflowers and Diego Rivera lilies. And the wall painting of a sultry woman and handsome caballero added to the delightful ambiance of this small place inside a lackluster strip mall off the highway./
Mural at Mi Cabrito in Richland, MS
Two states away, our lunch the following afternoon was at La Hacienda’s stand-alone building on Davis Street just north of I-10 in Pensacola. With the lunch crowd clearing out as Robie and I pulled into the parking lot, our first glance at the large, nondescript room with brown Venetian blinds, yellow curtains and restaurant-supply tables didn’t seem like much. But the place grew on me once we heard the trickling water from a fountain conveniently located in the middle of the dining room. And the colorfully painted booths and chairs featuring pastoral scenes of Mexico gave the restaurant a sense of place.
Plus, these people had apparently gotten the quesadilla memo. Under the heading for Side Orders, they offered a standard Quesadilla (chicken, beef, vegetarian, steak, shrimp or al pastor). Below Platos Especiales we had the option of Two Chicken Quesadillas served with lettuce, tomato, guacamole and sour cream; Chicken Quesadilla (one or two, the menu wasn’t clear) served with rice and beans; Quesadilla Fajita described as “two flour tortillas, top and bottom, filled with chicken or steak, cooked vegetables and cheese served with lettuce, guacamole, sour cream and pico de gallo;” and Quesadillas Típicas, two shrimp quesadillas with bell peppers, onions and tomatoes topped with a cheese sauce and served with guacamole and sour cream. And finally, under the Vegetarian Combos there was something called Two Quesadillas, one mushroom and one spinach alongside lettuce, tomato, sour cream and guacamole.
But with so many quesadilla options, which one to choose? Keeping it simple, Robie and I stuck with one chicken and one beef quesadilla (after confirming it wasn’t ground beef) from the side order menu. When they arrived, both quesadillas were well browned though they could have used more cheese. And without needing a reminder, our server brought the small bowl of pickled jalapeños as requested. Unfortunately, the processed white queso was less successful.
I looked online for the restaurant’s story but found only two short paragraphs about the three family-run, Pensacola-area restaurants that prepared food from scratch and offered private dining rooms to groups (in use by a busload of college kids during our visit). With a little more digging, I learned from TripAdvisor that none of the La Hacienda restaurants had a liquor license. And as one reviewer opined, “What is a Mexican restaurant without a margarita?”.
That evening at San Marcos Mexican Grill in Marianna outside Panama City, Robie and I hit the dinner rush and were seated in a back corner booth, the perfect place to watch the small dining room filled with Florida families enjoying an evening meal. Tucked into an outbuilding at the Walmart shopping center, the small establishment looked unremarkable. But inside, the hand-carved chairs decorated with burros, mariachis and peasants carrying baskets of pink flowers made the packed room utterly charming. And from our spot in the corner Robie and I basked in the warm glow of terra cotta lampshade painted with a simple red jalapeño.
At San Marcos Grill, the queso came as simple Cheese Dip, Beef Dip (queso with ground beef added) or Choriqueso, cheese dip with chorizo. All made with processed cheese. The restaurant’s allure dissipated further when we found only quesadillas with vegetables, chicken or ground beef on the menu. That is, until our helpful waiter pointed out a new menu item listed under Fajitas called, unsurprisingly, the New Fajita Quesadilla that came with our choice of grilled chicken or steak and sides of rice, beans and a salad. And while the salad was little more than a half-cup of shredded iceberg lettuce and a single tomato wedge, after so much unfettered Mexican cuisine the roughage was much appreciated.
Once more, the tortilla was crisp on the outside, soft on the inside and stuffed with onions and bell peppers as well as beef and a little cheese. And while the proportions had improved to allow us to taste the beef, Robie and I were starting to notice an alarming trend. Except for the complete absence of cheese at El Jimador in Arkansas, the further east we went, the more the cheese in the quesadillas was slowly, consistently, inexplicably disappearing.
This came as a shock since queso is the only ingredient listed in the dish’s name. And to our way of thinking, it’s the cheese in the quesadilla that should be the headliner.
When the requested jalapeños never made an appearance, Robie and I were too concerned for the wellbeing of our little server to mention them as he dashed around the busy dining room. And not wanting to keep him longer than it took to point out the new fajita quesadillas and scribble down our order, we didn’t bother asking if the restaurant had a history. But we can confirm that San Marcos Mexican Grill serves margaritas – good ones – from the tiny corner bar.
Because after another long day on the road, Robie and I were content to sit back and watch the good folks of Marianna while sipping refreshing beverages that came with salted rims.
To be continued…