22 Days Without a Bite of Mexican Food

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re: luckyfatima

Since posting lo those many hours ago I've made two trips to Habanero Mexican Cafe[sold-out,raucous and on a wait]

Los Altos[my favorite source for house salsa automatically brought to the table,gratis and with a smile]

Sazon[good queso "gringo"i.e Tex-Mex style]and Fiesta for Carne Asada tacos eaten on the curb in the warm morning sun.

I love Habanero's hand with the Mexican meats but I don't wait to eat in Austin.There's roughly 215 Mexican restaurants here so I don't care how much I love the restaurant there's always another one I love just a few blocks away.

It's certainly worth the two bucks at Sazon to ask for their made-to-order extra hot salsa.It's a fiery blend of roasted jalapenos,roasted serranos as well as habanero.Tomato based with plenty onions it's an off the menu special that the chef is usually happy to whip up.

I always get the arrachera tacos when I visit.Magnified beef flavor hot off the grill and stuffed into their housemade corn tortillas,theirs' is the finest version I've found in Austin.Their carnitas are good as well,not La Hacienda good by a long stretch but reputable.

Like most places in town Sazon has jacked up their prices.It's a combination of two factors:1] Those of us still eating out are paying extra for the folks who've cut back on their taqueria visits for the pleasure of the family table.Tacos are now an outrageous 3 dollars apiece.2]
If anybody wants to send a love letter[the Dennis Hopper kind]it should be sent to local chain Torchy's.

I guarantee their egregious,profit mongering pricing has influenced alot of local taco shops to raise the bar on their menu prices.At Torchy's you have so many investors all greedily suckling the corporate teat it's the only rational result.

No such problem at Los Altos where menu pricing is set by La Raza for La Raza.A giant tostada roughly a half a foot tall,smeared with a big spoon of refrieds,ladled with a good portion of carne guisada[or other offerings] and topped with lettuce,tomatoes,avocados and half pound or so of white cheese will set you back two and half bucks.Make sure you ask for the salsa verde a dynamite tomatilla base with great,tart,summery flavor.

Fiesta too has upped their prices.My breakfast set me back a dollar and ninety four cents.Which I didn't mind paying at all.The half pound or so carne asada taco was al carbon style personified.Good and bloody,charred up and seasoned with something like a Mexican Montreal blend.I sat on the curb and went to town with plenty of their good green salsa and freshly squoze lime juice.

After a couple hours working at home I plan on hitting Tacos el Rico later this afternoon for some of Yolanda's masterful take on Mexican cuisine.

Then on Lucky Fatima's rec I'm heading straight to el Regio for some charred pollo to go for my supper.

It's good to be back in Austin and eating like el Rey.

the words below are from MPH.When I was studying on where I wanted to eat upon my return I stumbled on this old post and it had me hankering for Habanero's delicious grilled meats.

Caveat lector: This long post is full of details about the nature and deliciousness of fajitas.

The posts from Twill and others have made me think about the many different things that are called fajitas. Traditional fajitas, like Northern-Mexican arracheras, consist of marinated skirt steak that's cooked over an open flame and thinly sliced. The flavor comes from:

Marinade—This can range from basic lime juice to exotic fruits (papaya, mango, pineapple, orange), alcohol (beer, red wine, tequila), to "prepared" flavorings (“Italian dressing,” Coke, soy sauce, jalapeño pickling liquid). Sometimes oil and garlic are added to the liquid. A nice long soak guarantees that the liquid’s spices and seasoning permeate the meat.

Steak quality—Skirt steak is a relatively cheap cut, but there's cheap and then there's cheap. The end result benefits from a nice ring of fat on one side.

Wood used for grilling—Wood smoke flavors the meat in a way that charcoal alone can't.

Accompaniments— Average fajitas can be elevated by very good salsas, guacamole, grilled onions and peppers, etc.

Fajitas can be compared to:

Tacos al carbon: Steak (often fajita meat, but also tenderloin or sirloin) grilled over coals. You don’t need much in the way of seasoning when the cut of meat is inherently tender and flavorful. This is the kind of dish any place with good beef—including Pappasito's—can do right.

Carne asada: Beef—often skirt or flank—grilled over an open flame.

"Faux" carne asada: Griddled chuck steak, chopped into very small squares, that's seasoned only with salt. (Called carne a la plancha in Mexico.) This is often served at take-out shops and taco trucks, where they have no grill.

Today a co-worker who knew about this thread offered to buy me a late lunch at Polvo's, in an attempt to mitigate the dismay I felt about returning to a place that has already disappointed me. So, I checked it out this afternoon. As usual, it was packed with young, white South Austinites, which seemed so odd to me, given the very different clientele that frequents the places I’ve been checking out on the east side.

Someone recently compared the fajitas at Los Comales with the fajitas al guajillo at Polvo's. To me, that's comparing apples to oranges. A more apt comparison would be between Polvo's regular fajitas and the traditional ones served at LC. Thus, for the sake of research, I ordered Polvo's fajitas (plain) and split them with my companion, who ordered the fajitas al guajillo. All fajita plates are $9.99.

The regular fajitas at Polvo's, according to the menu, are "cooked with special spices," and served with grilled onion slices and poblano strips. They come with guacamole, pico de gallo, sour cream, beans, rice, and flour or corn tortillas.

The very chewy fajita meat was better prepared than it was on my last visit, when it tasted steamed. This was quite likely the result of reheating pre-cooked room-temperature fajitas in a dash of water (as ashes describes, above). I could taste a trace of dried onion and garlic, along with salt and dried chile powder, not unlike the spices in packaged "fajita seasoning." But that was it. The dominant flavor was unadulterated beef. This suggests that these fajitas were either not marinated or not marinated for very long. [Perhaps they only really marinate their "cerveza fajitas."] Their plain fajitas also tasted like they were griddled then transferred to a hot comal, which was so hot that it blackened the onions and poblanos that were touching the bottom.

Their vegetarian rice and hard frijoles a la charra are still not delicious, though the latter had some chile flavor. The guacamole is still awful—completely flavorless, like eating chunky, green water—and the store-bought tortillas, both flour and corn, have not improved at all. The pico de gallo was all large chunks of white onions and non-ripe tomatoes, with a touch of cilantro, that had not coalesced into something more than the sum of its underwhelming parts.

At Habeñero Mexican Cafe, the fajitas are grilled to order—over mesquite. The marinade and spices soak in for hours, so that they penetrate every part of the beef. I believe that their salsas, guacamole, and pico de gallo are good enough to stand on their own. Los Comales also grills to order, over an open flame, and serves up delicious halves of grilled onions with the meat. In my opinion, the flavor of the regular fajitas, and of the sides, at both LC and HMC are better than similar offerings at Polvo's. Polvo's fajita meat is not up to being showcased in plain fajitas, with almost no seasoning, that are not cooked over wood or charcoal.

And what about Polvo's fajitas al guajillo? According to the menu, this dish comes with sun-dried peppers (guajillos and thin, short red ones—maybe chiles de arbol), pecans, raisins, peanuts, grilled onions, and grilled strips of poblanos. Twill's comment that this seems more like an Asian dish than a Tex-Mex or Mexican one seems right on. It reminded me of Kung Pao beef, except that a Thai or Chinese dish featuring skirt steak would be more highly seasoned.

Toasted guajillos are used in salsas, pozoles, caldos, and stews. Birria, too, if I'm not mistaken. I've also had a very good Texas-style chile made with them. Yet I've never seen them torn into large chunks and thrown into a grilled-meat dish. Chiles guajillos are very tough and need to be soaked a really long time to be malleable. At Polvo's they did this long enough for the chiles to be unfurled into long strips. But that was it, flavor-wise: Dried chiles and peanuts. (There were only a couple of raisins and one pecan half.) Ground-up guajillos, chiles de arbol, and/or nuts are the basis of many different Mexican sauces (various moles; nut-based sauces like nogada). To me, it would be interesting to see how these ingredients would combine if roasted, pureed, and cooked with meat, rather than just thrown next to grilled meat.

The fajitas al guajillo are more flavorful than Polvo's plain ones. (The meat, separated from the chiles and nuts, tastes the same.) They are also unusual. If you like chewing on plain reconstituted guajillos, then you'll love this dish. I don't, really. Thus, these are neither something unique that I'll want to have again, nor something that I'll crave the next time I want fajitas.

I'll add just a couple of thoughts on items unrelated to the fajita plates. Good regional-Mexican restaurants make cooked and uncooked sauces that are delicious. La Regio Montana comes to mind as a great local example. Ironically, despite their salsa bar, Polvo's does not have much success with many of their sauces. (This is probably a blessing, considering how god-awful their store-bought corn chips *still* are.) Today Polvo's salsa bar offered a pretty, red, fresh-tomato-based salsa that tasted like very sweet spaghetti-sauce. It's made with pureed canned tomatoes, barely any chiles, and a touch of cilantro, and had mild to no spiciness. The watery tomatillo-and-guajillo salsa was the hottest of the three available. It wasn't good, though. It seemed like smooth tomatillos from a can, with barely any guajillos. The dark-brown roasted-tomato salsa looked quite dramatic, but it just delivered one note of smoked-until-totally-blackened tomatoes that were pureed and supposedly mixed with vinegar, salt, and a touch of chile. [Note: I was told about these additional ingredients; I couldn't taste anything but the tomato.] This salsa was also extremely mild. Today the salsa bar also had a vegetable escabeche, which I didn't try. On another occasion, I did try their salsa ranchera, which wasn't good. Since Polvo's "fajitas ranchero" are the same old fajita meat sautéed with their bad pico de gallo and their "ranchero" sauce, I have no plans to try them, especially since HMC does a deliciously seasoned version that I love.

We also ordered a plate of papas Monterrey as an appetizer, just so we'd have something that didn't have to be consumed with chips. This dish is basically a dry potato stew: It consists of large chunks of potatoes, large pieces of pickled carrot sliced on the diagonal (from the escabeche?), and slices of grilled poblanos and onions, all in a mild tomato-sauce-like red salsa. The pickled carrots had the most spice, and thus the most presence. The best-tasting pieces of potatoes were the ones that were well roasted, but most were under-cooked. If you ignored the almost-raw interior of some of the potatoes, this appetizer was mostly inoffensive. However, it was not exciting. I love Tex-Mex breakfast potatoes, potato-based picadillos, and interior-Mexican sweet-potato dishes, but I didn't really get the Polvo’s dish. It did distract me from the chips, though.

That's it for me as far as Polvo's is concerned. The fajitas meat itself wasn't as bad this time, but nothing was very good and too many things were bad. Combination regional-Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants can have great chow. I'm thinking of El Mirador and even some dishes at La Fogata, both in San Antonio. On my visits, Polvo's has offered mostly mediocre dishes—in a colorful atmosphere complete with plentiful, though not particularly good, margaritas; bilingual staff [not rude on this visit, though they have been before]; and user-friendly food that's unique in a way that's readily understandable to their customer base. By this I mean that fajitas al guajillo are more accessible than, for example, sesos [brains] would be. Polvo's has hit on a winning formula, so they won’t miss this chowhound’s business. And I definitely won't miss them.

Permalink | Reply

By scrumptiouschef on Jul 26, 2009 09:48 AM

El rey necesita algo regio. por eso, le recomendo El Regio. Straight up simple pollo asado, green fire sauce, beautiful warm tortillas, what more can one ask for to get back into the beautiful Mexican offerings of Austin.
Permalink | Reply

By luckyfatima on Jul 26, 2009 08:46 AM
1. re: luckyfatima
  Since posting lo those many hours ago I've made two trips to Habanero Mexican Cafe[sold-out,raucous and on a wait]
  Los Altos[my favorite source for house salsa automatically brought to the table,gratis and with a smile]
  Sazon[good queso "gringo"i.e Tex-Mex style]and Fiesta for Carne Asada tacos eaten on the curb in the warm morning sun.
  I love Habanero's hand with the Mexican meats but I don't wait to eat in Austin.There's roughly 215 Mexican restaurants here so I don't care how much I love the restaurant there's always another one I love just a few blocks away.
  It's certainly worth the two bucks at Sazon to ask for their made-to-order extra hot salsa.It's a fiery blend of roasted jalapenos,roasted serranos as well as habanero.Tomato based with plenty onions it's an off the menu special that the chef is usually happy to whip up.
  I always get the arrachera tacos when I visit.Magnified beef flavor hot off the grill and stuffed into their housemade corn tortillas,theirs' is the finest version I've found in Austin.Their carnitas are good as well,not La Hacienda good by a long stretch but reputable.
  Like most places in town Sazon has jacked up their prices.It's a combination of two factors:1] Those of us still eating out are paying extra for the folks who've cut back on their taqueria visits for the pleasure of the family table.Tacos are now an outrageous 3 dollars apiece.2]
  If anybody wants to send a love letter[the Dennis Hopper kind]it should be sent to local chain Torchy's.
  I guarantee their egregious,profit mongering pricing has influenced alot of local taco shops to raise the bar on their menu prices.At Torchy's you have so many investors all greedily suckling the corporate teat it's the only rational result.
  No such problem at Los Altos where menu pricing is set by La Raza for La Raza.A giant tostada roughly a half a foot tall,smeared with a big spoon of refrieds,ladled with a good portion of carne guisada[or other offerings] and topped with lettuce,tomatoes,avocados and half pound or so of white cheese will set you back two and half bucks.Make sure you ask for the salsa verde a dynamite tomatilla base with great,tart,summery flavor.
  Fiesta too has upped their prices.My breakfast set me back a dollar and ninety four cents.Which I didn't mind paying at all.The half pound or so carne asada taco was al carbon style personified.Good and bloody,charred up and seasoned with something like a Mexican Montreal blend.I sat on the curb and went to town with plenty of their good green salsa and freshly squoze lime juice.
  After a couple hours working at home I plan on hitting Tacos el Rico later this afternoon for some of Yolanda's masterful take on Mexican cuisine.
  Then on Lucky Fatima's rec I'm heading straight to el Regio for some charred pollo to go for my supper.
  It's good to be back in Austin and eating like el Rey.
  the words below are from MPH.When I was studying on where I wanted to eat upon my return I stumbled on this old post and it had me hankering for Habanero's delicious grilled meats.
  Caveat lector: This long post is full of details about the nature and deliciousness of fajitas.
  The posts from Twill and others have made me think about the many different things that are called fajitas. Traditional fajitas, like Northern-Mexican arracheras, consist of marinated skirt steak that's cooked over an open flame and thinly sliced. The flavor comes from:
  Marinade—This can range from basic lime juice to exotic fruits (papaya, mango, pineapple, orange), alcohol (beer, red wine, tequila), to "prepared" flavorings (“Italian dressing,” Coke, soy sauce, jalapeño pickling liquid). Sometimes oil and garlic are added to the liquid. A nice long soak guarantees that the liquid’s spices and seasoning permeate the meat.
  Steak quality—Skirt steak is a relatively cheap cut, but there's cheap and then there's cheap. The end result benefits from a nice ring of fat on one side.
  Wood used for grilling—Wood smoke flavors the meat in a way that charcoal alone can't.
  Accompaniments— Average fajitas can be elevated by very good salsas, guacamole, grilled onions and peppers, etc.
  Fajitas can be compared to:
  Tacos al carbon: Steak (often fajita meat, but also tenderloin or sirloin) grilled over coals. You don’t need much in the way of seasoning when the cut of meat is inherently tender and flavorful. This is the kind of dish any place with good beef—including Pappasito's—can do right.
  Carne asada: Beef—often skirt or flank—grilled over an open flame.
  "Faux" carne asada: Griddled chuck steak, chopped into very small squares, that's seasoned only with salt. (Called carne a la plancha in Mexico.) This is often served at take-out shops and taco trucks, where they have no grill.
  Today a co-worker who knew about this thread offered to buy me a late lunch at Polvo's, in an attempt to mitigate the dismay I felt about returning to a place that has already disappointed me. So, I checked it out this afternoon. As usual, it was packed with young, white South Austinites, which seemed so odd to me, given the very different clientele that frequents the places I’ve been checking out on the east side.
  Someone recently compared the fajitas at Los Comales with the fajitas al guajillo at Polvo's. To me, that's comparing apples to oranges. A more apt comparison would be between Polvo's regular fajitas and the traditional ones served at LC. Thus, for the sake of research, I ordered Polvo's fajitas (plain) and split them with my companion, who ordered the fajitas al guajillo. All fajita plates are $9.99.
  The regular fajitas at Polvo's, according to the menu, are "cooked with special spices," and served with grilled onion slices and poblano strips. They come with guacamole, pico de gallo, sour cream, beans, rice, and flour or corn tortillas.
  The very chewy fajita meat was better prepared than it was on my last visit, when it tasted steamed. This was quite likely the result of reheating pre-cooked room-temperature fajitas in a dash of water (as ashes describes, above). I could taste a trace of dried onion and garlic, along with salt and dried chile powder, not unlike the spices in packaged "fajita seasoning." But that was it. The dominant flavor was unadulterated beef. This suggests that these fajitas were either not marinated or not marinated for very long. [Perhaps they only really marinate their "cerveza fajitas."] Their plain fajitas also tasted like they were griddled then transferred to a hot comal, which was so hot that it blackened the onions and poblanos that were touching the bottom.
  Their vegetarian rice and hard frijoles a la charra are still not delicious, though the latter had some chile flavor. The guacamole is still awful—completely flavorless, like eating chunky, green water—and the store-bought tortillas, both flour and corn, have not improved at all. The pico de gallo was all large chunks of white onions and non-ripe tomatoes, with a touch of cilantro, that had not coalesced into something more than the sum of its underwhelming parts.
  At Habeñero Mexican Cafe, the fajitas are grilled to order—over mesquite. The marinade and spices soak in for hours, so that they penetrate every part of the beef. I believe that their salsas, guacamole, and pico de gallo are good enough to stand on their own. Los Comales also grills to order, over an open flame, and serves up delicious halves of grilled onions with the meat. In my opinion, the flavor of the regular fajitas, and of the sides, at both LC and HMC are better than similar offerings at Polvo's. Polvo's fajita meat is not up to being showcased in plain fajitas, with almost no seasoning, that are not cooked over wood or charcoal.
  And what about Polvo's fajitas al guajillo? According to the menu, this dish comes with sun-dried peppers (guajillos and thin, short red ones—maybe chiles de arbol), pecans, raisins, peanuts, grilled onions, and grilled strips of poblanos. Twill's comment that this seems more like an Asian dish than a Tex-Mex or Mexican one seems right on. It reminded me of Kung Pao beef, except that a Thai or Chinese dish featuring skirt steak would be more highly seasoned.
  Toasted guajillos are used in salsas, pozoles, caldos, and stews. Birria, too, if I'm not mistaken. I've also had a very good Texas-style chile made with them. Yet I've never seen them torn into large chunks and thrown into a grilled-meat dish. Chiles guajillos are very tough and need to be soaked a really long time to be malleable. At Polvo's they did this long enough for the chiles to be unfurled into long strips. But that was it, flavor-wise: Dried chiles and peanuts. (There were only a couple of raisins and one pecan half.) Ground-up guajillos, chiles de arbol, and/or nuts are the basis of many different Mexican sauces (various moles; nut-based sauces like nogada). To me, it would be interesting to see how these ingredients would combine if roasted, pureed, and cooked with meat, rather than just thrown next to grilled meat.
  The fajitas al guajillo are more flavorful than Polvo's plain ones. (The meat, separated from the chiles and nuts, tastes the same.) They are also unusual. If you like chewing on plain reconstituted guajillos, then you'll love this dish. I don't, really. Thus, these are neither something unique that I'll want to have again, nor something that I'll crave the next time I want fajitas.
  I'll add just a couple of thoughts on items unrelated to the fajita plates. Good regional-Mexican restaurants make cooked and uncooked sauces that are delicious. La Regio Montana comes to mind as a great local example. Ironically, despite their salsa bar, Polvo's does not have much success with many of their sauces. (This is probably a blessing, considering how god-awful their store-bought corn chips *still* are.) Today Polvo's salsa bar offered a pretty, red, fresh-tomato-based salsa that tasted like very sweet spaghetti-sauce. It's made with pureed canned tomatoes, barely any chiles, and a touch of cilantro, and had mild to no spiciness. The watery tomatillo-and-guajillo salsa was the hottest of the three available. It wasn't good, though. It seemed like smooth tomatillos from a can, with barely any guajillos. The dark-brown roasted-tomato salsa looked quite dramatic, but it just delivered one note of smoked-until-totally-blackened tomatoes that were pureed and supposedly mixed with vinegar, salt, and a touch of chile. [Note: I was told about these additional ingredients; I couldn't taste anything but the tomato.] This salsa was also extremely mild. Today the salsa bar also had a vegetable escabeche, which I didn't try. On another occasion, I did try their salsa ranchera, which wasn't good. Since Polvo's "fajitas ranchero" are the same old fajita meat sautéed with their bad pico de gallo and their "ranchero" sauce, I have no plans to try them, especially since HMC does a deliciously seasoned version that I love.
  We also ordered a plate of papas Monterrey as an appetizer, just so we'd have something that didn't have to be consumed with chips. This dish is basically a dry potato stew: It consists of large chunks of potatoes, large pieces of pickled carrot sliced on the diagonal (from the escabeche?), and slices of grilled poblanos and onions, all in a mild tomato-sauce-like red salsa. The pickled carrots had the most spice, and thus the most presence. The best-tasting pieces of potatoes were the ones that were well roasted, but most were under-cooked. If you ignored the almost-raw interior of some of the potatoes, this appetizer was mostly inoffensive. However, it was not exciting. I love Tex-Mex breakfast potatoes, potato-based picadillos, and interior-Mexican sweet-potato dishes, but I didn't really get the Polvo’s dish. It did distract me from the chips, though.
  That's it for me as far as Polvo's is concerned. The fajitas meat itself wasn't as bad this time, but nothing was very good and too many things were bad. Combination regional-Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants can have great chow. I'm thinking of El Mirador and even some dishes at La Fogata, both in San Antonio. On my visits, Polvo's has offered mostly mediocre dishes—in a colorful atmosphere complete with plentiful, though not particularly good, margaritas; bilingual staff [not rude on this visit, though they have been before]; and user-friendly food that's unique in a way that's readily understandable to their customer base. By this I mean that fajitas al guajillo are more accessible than, for example, sesos [brains] would be. Polvo's has hit on a winning formula, so they won’t miss this chowhound’s business. And I definitely won't miss them.
  Permalink | Reply
  
  By scrumptiouschef on Jul 26, 2009 09:48 AM
Thanks for the comprehensive list of other places to try as well as avoid, very useful.
I went to tacodeli for the first time today after hearing good things but was pretty disappointed. It was puro yanqui. The mole sauce on beef was flavorful but the beef itself wasn't tender. The chicken adobado was bland, the chicken of the adobo was breast, so dry and stringy. The brisket was also under seasoned. None of the taco fillings were salty enough to stand up to being in a tortilla, and the salsas were pretty watery.
I think Torchy's is also kind of fusion tacos, too, but I heard it is real good.Gonna try there next as soon as possible.
Next to google Sazon and Habanero's to see where they are. Thanks again for the recs.
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By luckyfatima on Jul 26, 2009 05:45 PM
Welcome back. I was at el Rico for 3 breakfast tacos this morning. Potato and egg still is transcendental. I don't get there often for non-egg based tacos.
We have 3 other Mexican based restaurants that we enjoy. Our favorite border-Mex is at La Reyna--I believe you've written about them before. If I want my goopy brown sauce enchilidas this is where I head. For what I consider the most interesting "mex-mex" (noting the fact I've never been to Mexico) we head to Azul Tequila by Target on Lamar/71. The left-hand (Mex interior) side of the menu contains the favorites. In particular we enjoy the tostadas de tinga and the chile manzano. Finally, as you wrote Sazon is our favorite all-round contender as their menu seems to have improved over the years it has been opened.
I've never been to Los Altos so we'll have to try it.
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By Carter B. on Jul 26, 2009 06:29 PM

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22 Days Without a Bite of Mexican Food

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