Subject: Mexican Food and Cooking

• Hot Tamales at Gerardo’s on Patton

  October 16, 2007

• Pop Quiz

  October 25, 2007

• $13 at Fish City Grill on Buffalo Speedway

  October 31, 2007

• Robb Walsh Visits the First Taco Bell in Monterrey

  October 29, 2007

• The Carnicería Connoisseur: Tierra Caliente Meat Market & Taqueria

  November 5, 2007

• The Carnicería Connoisseur: HEB’s Mi Tienda in Pasadena

  November 15, 2007

• The Carniceria Connoisseur: El Tiempo Marches On

  January 10, 2008

• $13 at Sabor! on Bellaire

  January 25, 2008

• Felix Mexican Restaurant Closes After 60 Years in Business

  March 21, 2008

• Pancho Villa Wants You, Gringo!

  June 13, 2008

• Tex-Mex Temples: Combo Platters of Hopes and Dreams

  July 2, 2008

• Tripping Down Tex-Mex Memory Lane

  July 3, 2008

• Texas Food at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C.

  July 7, 2008

• History of Texas Chili--Without Beans

  Chili con carne was introduced to America by the "Chili Queens," women who served food in San Antonio's Military Plaza as early as the 1860s. Chili stands were also common in Galveston and Houston; they were the taco trucks of the 1800s. Tamales with chili was the most common order--beans were often added. Laborers counted on the chili vendors for a quick meal. Adventurous eaters loved them. And the upper classes tried to chase them away or get them shut down. Chili con carne is not an impo

  December 10, 2008

• Homemade Tamales R Us

  The question around town is: "Where can I get some homemade tamales?" For a great many Texans, tamales are a necessity of the holiday season. But the tamales you buy in the grocery store are usually disappointing. And while we all love the giant dollar a piece tamales at Doña Tere, they aren't the kind of Tex-Mex tamales most of us grew up with. Seems like tamale ladies used to be everywhere this time of the year, selling aluminum foil-wrapped bundles for six or eight bucks apiece. But I have

  December 12, 2008

• Your Holiday Season Tamale Making: Recipe for Masa

  When I was helping test recipes for The Tex-Mex Cookbook we tried to come up with a manageable recipe for two dozen tamales at a time. With Christmas just around the corner, here is a recipe for the masa you'll need. For this recipe you will need 1 ½ tsp of salt, 4 cups Maseca, 1 tsp of baking powder, 3 ½ cups of warm chicken or pork broth (or water) and 1 cup of lard.

  December 17, 2008

• MUY CALIENTE SUMMER EDITION

  June 4, 2009

• Adios Otilia's? Not So Fast.

  Strict dress code at Otilia's. Word hit the streets this week that Otilia's, the venerable restaurant on Long Point which has served old-fashioned interior Mexican cuisine for almost twenty years, was on the auction block.  Restaurant, employees and recipes -- all reportedly for sale.  And, predictably, longtime fans and patrons of the restaurant were horrified. During a recent trip to Otilia's, I was stunned to see how much the old girl has changed in the last five years sin

  February 14, 2009

• The King of Tex-Mex Is Dead

  photo by Will van OverbeekThird-generation Tex-Mex legend Matt Martinez, Jr. died last Friday at the age of 63. With his family, he owned Matt's Rancho Martinez and Matt's No Place restaurants in Dallas. He also had an interest in Matt's El Rancho, the legendary Austin Tex-Mex restaurant founded by his father in 1952. His grandfather, Delphino Martinez, immigrated from Mexico and made enough money selling tamales on Congress Avenue to open El Original, one of Austin's first Tex-Mex restaurants,

  March 16, 2009

• Hot Tamales

  Web exclusive!

  December 4, 2008

• Nuevos Huevos at La Guadalupana Bakery and Café

  November 27, 2008

• Las Nuevas Tamaleras

  Web exclusive!

  November 13, 2008

• Taco Cones and Tasmanian Devils at Amazon Grill

  October 30, 2008

• Breakfast Enchiladas at Mi Sombrero

  March 13, 2008

• Temples of Tex-Mex: Vintage Restaurants

  July 3, 2008

• Show of Hands at Alamo Tamale Factory

  September 4, 2008

• SPECIAL TORTILLA CONTEST EDITION

  July 24, 2008

• Temples of Tex-Mex: A Diner's Guide to the State's Oldest Mexican Restaurants

  July 3, 2008

• Historic Huaraches in Stafford

  A taco stand yields an awesome breakfast and the solution to a Mexican food mystery

  July 3, 2008

• Places Like Los Dos Amigos Are Disappearing On Washington

  April 17, 2008

• Illegal Immigrants in the Restaurant Industry

  December 20, 2007

• Mexican White Cheese, American Yellow Cheese and Brown Lawyers

  December 6, 2007

• El Jardin

  A New York Times story on Tex-Mex left a lot of Houstonians wondering, "Why El Jardin?"

  November 29, 2007

• Gerardo's Drive-in Grocery

  Some of the best Mexican food in the city is sold by the pound at this little corner store

  October 18, 2007

• $7 at Laredo Taqueria

  Photo by Brittanie SheyWhere: Laredo Taqueria, 915 Snover, 713-861-7279. Open Monday through Saturday 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. What $7 gets you: Almost anything on the menu. Tacos are $1.50 or $2, breakfast and dinner plates cost $5.50 to $7.50. The most expensive item is $8. We had an asada de puerco taco, a spicy chicken breakfast taco and a half-liter Mexican Coke, all for $5, tax included. For two more bucks we could have added two sides but the tacos were enough to fill us up. It's easy to ac

  April 20, 2009

• Guadalajara Del Centro

  April 30, 2009

• Voluptuous Bikini Cake at El Bolillo

  El Bolillo Bakery on Airline has got a lot of things going for it. There are crunchy bolillos in two sizes. Fresh corn tortillas made out of stoneground nixtamal are sold out of a steamer case and they are exceptional. The telera bread is great for tortas--I also use it cut in half for hamburger buns. I had never paid much attention to El Bolillo's busy cake decorating business before. Then I saw this bikini cake. I don't know if it was a one-of-a-kind custom order or a standard cake that l

  May 8, 2009

• Kiko's Mexican Cafe

  Photos by J.C. ReidKiko'sJust like mom used to make it. When was the last time you ate at a restaurant and said that to yourself? Probably not very recently. Lots of restaurants advertise "authentic, home-cooked" meals because they use the original recipes from the owner's family, but they're still usually cooked by a battalion of for-hire cooks. Something inevitably gets lost in the translation. But as I recently discovered when Jay Francis tipped me to a restaurant called Kiko's Mexican Cafe

  May 21, 2009

• Numero Dos

  May 28, 2009

• Felix's Queso Makes a Comeback

  Photos by J.C. ReidWhen Robb Walsh chronicled the closing of Felix Mexican Restaurant last year, the outpouring of grief was reminiscent of the sadness accompanying the loss of a great statesman or member of a royal family. And in a way it was. That restaurant was the last remaining legacy of Felix Tijerina Sr.'s contributions to both the cuisine that came to be known as Tex-Mex, and to the promotion of Mexican-American causes through his four terms as national president of LULAC. Blog comment

  June 8, 2009

• Loaves and Fishes

  July 23, 2009

• The Meaning of Mojarra

  Photo by Robb Walsh​After more than a week of fishing in Arkansas, I headed for Taqueria Jesus Maria as soon as I got back to town. I had Tex-Mex in mind, but I skipped the enchiladas when I saw the special on a whole fried mojarra. I love to eat the crispy fried fish chunks on a hot corn tortilla with lettuce, tomato, guacamole and lots of salsa. Slashing the meaty part of the fish to the bone, sprinkling it with seasoning, and then frying it whole is an easy and delicious way to cook a w

  July 27, 2009

• Houston Breakfasts vs. Austin Breakfasts

  Photo by Robb Walsh​This plate of huevos rancheros with bacon and homemade flour tortillas set me back $2.29 at Taqueria Jesus Maria in South Houston. You can breakfast equally well at dozens of other taquerias all over town -- Kiko's on Fulton and Pancho Villa's on Wilcrest both charge $2.99. Dos Amigos on Washington gets $3.25 for an excellent Tex-Mex breakfast special. So imagine my amazement when a commenter recently bemoaned the fact that Houston didn't have any breakfast restaurant

  August 5, 2009

• Keep on Trucking

  August 13, 2009

• Food Fight: Battle Cheese Enchilada

  Photos by Katharine Shilcutt​"Cheese enchiladas served in chili con carne -- not thin, meatless chili gravy, or authentic enchilada sauce -- are the hallmark of real Tex-Mex, according to 78-year-old Fort Worth sportswriter and Tex-Mex expert Dan Jenkins," as Robb Walsh stated in his July 2008 feature "Temples of Tex-Mex." The gooey, cheesy, occasionally meaty cheese enchiladas served in classic Tex-Mex joints were more often than not the first Mexican (used here interchangeably with "T

  August 20, 2009

• Laredo Cavalcade

  September 3, 2009

• Just-Off-the-Griddle Tortillas at Laredo Taqueria

  Photo by Robb Walsh​In this week's Café review, we visit Laredo Taqueria on Cavalcade, where breakfast is a wondrous experience. When you get in line to order your breakfast tacos, you find yourself standing in front of the griddle where the flour tortillas are being prepared. If you watch carefully, you will see the very tortillas you are about to eat being hand-formed, cooked and passed along to the steam table. The ladies at the griddle turn out a couple of dozen tortillas every few

  September 2, 2009

• Big House on the Hill

  October 15, 2009

• Late Night Scene: Taqueria la Tapatia

  ​On Saturday nights, Taqueria la Tapatia has the craziest music mix. For every two Tejano love songs played, they play one song -- to use the term loosely -- of throbbing, Eurotrash techno. Let's just say it's an odd soundtrack for a burrito. Given a choice, I'll take the Tejano, because the waiters will occasionally dance to the rhythm when they think no one is looking. Around 10 p.m. the crowd is sparse, mostly scattered in booths near the window, but by midnight it's pretty hopping, esp

  October 16, 2009

• Tamale Time: A Hot Tamale Sandwich

  ​Forget the dollar menu at Taco Bell, the tamale torta at Doña Tere on Bissonnet is a full meal for $1.79. I got the chile beef tamale and doused the bolillo with salsa to lubricate the rather dry-looking combo of starch on starch. It tasted better than it looked. But next time, I think I'll add lettuce, tomatoes, avocado and mayo. The chicken tamale with green sauce wouldn't be bad as a filling either.

  October 26, 2009