For the next 20 weeks, we'll be rounding up the runners-up to our 2011 Best of Houston® winners. In many categories, picking each year's winner is no easy task. We'll be spotlighting 20 of those categories, in which the winner had hefty competition from other Houston bars and restaurants.
5. Los Tios
There's likely a Los Tios near you; there are plenty of the Houston-based Tex-Mex restaurants scattered around town. And if you grew up here, there's a good chance you grew up eating at Los Tios after recitals or baseball games. Nostalgia isn't the only influencing factor in loving Los Tios, though; its enchiladas are genuinely good stuff. I'm also a fan of the creamy shrimp enchiladas (pictured), which I normally dislike elsewhere; that alone endears Los Tios to me.
Chef and owner Sylvia Casares has alternately been called the Enchilada Empress and the Queen of Enchiladas. Her chili gravy is thin and yet still complex, coating the blissfully basic cheese enchiladas with a richness that's unexpected. Yet it all works, bright sparks of chile de árbol and dusky hues of cumin all coming together in a frantic rush of flavor. On top of the soft cheese and beneath the eye-watering snap of raw white onions, this is South Texas Tex-Mex at its finest and most genuine.
