Take a trip behind the scenes in our slideshow, and see exactly how those terrific cheese enchiladas are made.
Troy Fields
The old-school cheese enchiladas are topped with real-deal chili gravy.
Location Info
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11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Monday through Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Thursday, 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. Friday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday
Frito pie: $6.95
Queso fundido: $7.95
Tacos al carbon: $14.95
San Antonio puffy taco plate: $9.95
Enchiladas #7: $10.95
El Gallo Verde: $12.95
Roosevelt Special: $13.95
El Real burger: $8.95
Churros: $4.95
Milkshake No Minors: $5.95
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BLOG POST: El Real Tex-Mex Cafe & Shrine: Revival of the Fittest
SLIDESHOW: Keeping It Real at El Real Tex-Mex Cafe
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A mammoth burger sits in front of me at El Real Tex-Mex Cafe, one bun heaped high with meat that's balanced precariously between a pantry's worth of toppings.
On the bottom of the bun, in place of mustard or mayonnaise, is a viscous spread of refried beans, rich with lard and well-salted. Atop the beans are Fritos, which are already soaking up the juices that ooze from the meat. And piled on the patty is a tangle of caramelized onions, roasted poblano peppers and melty shreds of queso fresco. The lettuce and tomato on top look almost laughably out of place by this point, and as I take my first bite of the beautifully medium-rare burger, I think to myself: This is a burger that Robb Walsh would be proud of.
And he should be proud of it; it's his burger, after all.
The former food critic for the Houston Press opened El Real Tex-Mex Cafe in March of this year along with two other notable heavy-hitters in the city's dining scene: Bryan Caswell, chef at Reef and host of the Food Network's Best in Smoke, and Bill Floyd. Floyd and Caswell are known for opening and operating a slew of successful restaurants in Houston: Reef, Little Bigs and Stella Sola. Floyd grew up in San Antonio, dining on that city's famous puffy tacos, and Walsh is the author of three books on Tex-Mex cuisine. All three share a love of old-school Tex-Mex, and created El Real Tex-Mex Cafe as an outpouring of their affection for the often maligned cuisine. The trio seemed perfectly matched, but it was also faced with legions of detractors hoping it would fail.
Although Walsh is almost universally beloved by our readers, they take a very different view of Caswell, who they see as getting too big for his britches. For his part, Caswell takes his many knocks with grace and rarely comments publicly on the flak thrown his way. Likewise, Walsh is disliked by many restaurateurs, many of whom have been eager to rip his restaurant apart in acts of retribution.
"The hunter will become the hunted," warned Rich Connelly in the Houston Press about El Real's announced opening.
Despite a rocky opening and harsh reviews, the men haven't failed in their pursuit of Tex-Mex glory. But they have faltered.
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At El Real, even the smallest details are noticed by diners, from good to bad: The chairs, rescued from Felix Mexican Restaurant up the road, have been beautifully and lovingly refurbished. Good. The margaritas have an unremitting chemical aftertaste. Bad. The rich, dusky, nostalgia-inducing chile powder is ground by hand, from scratch, every day. Good. The food often arrives with dried, crispy edges, as if it's been sitting under a salamander broiler for too long. Bad.
Consistency issues abound at El Real, in its food, its drinks and its service. There's absolutely no denying that the food here is good — very good, in fact, as with the lush, almost buttery tacos al carbon — but it's so often mangled by the kitchen that it's difficult to appreciate that hand-ground chile powder or the lush, porcine lard that laces the refried beans. I've been on the receiving end of several wrong plates, of dried-out enchiladas, of Frito Pies with only the scantest amount of chili-logged chips, of bland tortillas lacking any salt, of food that took so long to arrive in an otherwise quiet early evening service that I wondered if — to quote my father — the cooks were out back killing the chickens themselves. One memorable afternoon, my dining companion received a mug full of pure tequila and ice after requesting a margarita on the rocks. "I thought that's what you wanted," responded the confused waiter. "You asked for house tequila."
Service, too, suffers. Waitstaff ranges from overly attentive to entirely absent, as with a bumbling young man who recently hung out at our table so often — intruding on conversations with his own take on subjects — that one dining companion jokingly offered him some of our food. I understand that when a certain new Tex-Mex place opened down the street, it poached almost all of El Real's staff. It's a tribute to El Real, however, that most of the staff came back mere days later.
And that's because, when it gets right down to it, El Real has a very solid foundation and the potential to become a landmark restaurant. There's nothing else like it in town. The chips and salsa alone testify to this fact.
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The chips are thin, fine tributes to tortilla chips of old, as they should be. Ditto the salsa, served warm, which contains thickets of tomatoes and peppers that are roasted every day. Its deep, meaty flavor comes from the addition of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, for a satisfyingly rich kick. These two are almost enough to endear me to El Real through the good and the bad. After all, it's these nostalgic throwbacks upon which the entire restaurant is based.
