Should you happen to be in San Antonio, Texas, here are ten of my favourite Mexican diners and restaurants in no particular order. The hungry traveller should probably keep in mind that when I find something I like on a menu, I rarely eat anything else in whichever establishment I happen to be in, so the following reviews are by no means comprehensive.
Guajillo's, 1001 Northwest Loop 410, TX 78213.
Guajillo's bills itself as the shortcut to Mexico, and the mole poblano is possibly the best I've eaten outside of Mexico. Mole poblano is one of those things which most places get wrong, having mistaken its characteristic heat for the whole point of the thing, which shouldn't be the case if you're prioritising flavour over recognition by the Guinness Book of Records as most stupid cunt to have eaten the hottest chili pepper known to gastronomic science. Mole poblano is the one with the sauce combining chocolate, chili, and sesame seeds, amongst other things. The key to getting it right seems to be that it should be just a little hotter than you might like, but not by much so you are at least able to appreciate what you're eating. They get it exactly right at Guajillo's, and their rice is also amazing - and quite unlike the usual Texan variation on Mexican rice. A visit to Guajillo's does actually sort of feel a little like dining out in Mexico City, and I wouldn't swear that they haven't got some sort of elaborate underground pipeline in operation pumping the stuff north direct from the source. I've also had other items from their menu, and most of it seems to be to roughly the same high standard. Bess said she'd had better churros, but they tasted pretty great to me.
Sonia's, 10447 Nacogdoches Rd, TX 78217.
I've only ever had breakfast at Sonia's but they've never let me down. So far as Mexican diners go, if the building is some colour so bright that it hurts your eyes and there's a happy cartoon chili pepper wearing a sombrero painted on the window, then the food is usually going to be pretty good. We seem to have about a million places fitting this description in San Antonio, mostly following what is essentially the same menu, and yet strangely no two of them seem to be quite alike. I tend to go for either the huevos rancheros or a migas plate at Sonia's, and both are always wonderful and in reasonable servings rather than those Texas gutbucket specials you tend to get at a few places. Also, there's something about Sonia's which makes the place feel like you're actually in Mexico, somehow. I'm not sure if it's the folksy décor (the real deal rather than some beardy white guy idea of the same), the all-year Christmas tree, or the food - but it works for me, whatever it is. Great service too.
El Chapparal, 15103 Bandera Rd, Helotes, TX 78023.
This one's a bit out of the way but it's worth making the trip. The food is unambiguously Tex-Mex, which is Mexican but with greater emphasis on cheese, amongst other things. I've occasionally encountered a certain snobbery regarding Tex-Mex, almost always from tourists with some cultural bee in the bonnet. One of them once set me right on facebook, opining, actually I think you'll find you're eating Tex-Mex rather than Mexican cuisine if you live in San Antonio. I pointed out that I'd spent plenty of time in Mexico and was therefore fully aware of what I was eating, thank you very much. He was from New York - typically - because if you want to know about Mexican food, obviously you're going to ask some cracker from la Manzana Grande. Anyway, culinary habits vary from one region to another all across Mexico, just as they do in any country, and Tex-Mex happens to be the variation local to this part of what used to be Mexico, and still is Mexico so far as I'm concerned. Just because George W. Bush used to be governor, it doesn't mean that Tex-Mex gets disqualified, pendejo. Anyway, if you're going to eat Tex-Mex in San Antonio, then you may as well climb all the way to the top of the tree, which is approximately where you'll find el Chapparal. The décor is a little over the top and the parking lot is always rammed with trucks full of fat people, but the food is fantastic. The salsa is so fresh that you'll actually notice and their mole poblano is the best I've had outside of Guajillo's.
Siete Leguas, 2470 Harry Wurzbach Rd, TX 78209.
This diner is less than a minute's walk from my house, but wouldn't make the list were the food not up to scratch. It was called Papagayos this time last year, then appeared to shut down a couple of months into the pandemic so we all assumed that was that until they reopened as Siete Leguas a couple of months ago. I'm still not quite sure what happened but it's the same people and the same menu. Siete Leguas was the name of Pancho Villa's favourite horse and is also the name of a popular brand of tequila, beyond which, I have no idea. To be brutally frank, it wasn't a massive surprise when they closed down as the service had been a bit intermittent during the final days of Papagayos, and to be honest it wasn't amazing just now - seemingly down to understaffing from what I could tell. There are a few fairly harsh online reviews of this place including one which claims that a specific waitress had an unpleasant fishy smell. For what it's worth, while the food has sometimes seemed a little slow in coming, it's always been great and I've never noticed any particularly fishy service. The migas plate probably isn't quite up to the Los Dos Laredos version, but it's good, and I'm really glad they're back.
Los Dos Laredos, 1264 Austin Highway, TX 78209.
We discovered Los Dos Laredos when Bandera Jalisco went a little off the boil, relatively speaking. We'd been past Los Dos Laredos a million times because it's quite near to our home, but had assumed it was just one of a million of its kind - bright orange and with an anthropomorphic chili pepper wearing a sombrero painted on the window. Upon close inspection it actually turns out to be more or less the greatest Mexican diner in human history. It does everything the others do but gets it right, and back at the beginning of the pandemic when everything was turning to shit, their takeaway was about the only one which really came anywhere near as close to what you would be served when dining in. I tend to have the migas plate - which is, by the way, easily the best migas I've eaten - but everything else at Los Dos Laredos seems to be equally great. My wife and myself have become such regulars that the waitresses usually know what we're going to order before we've sat down, and I really can't overemphasise how wonderful this place is.
Sabor Cocinabar, 4331 McCullough Ave, TX 78212.
Sabor Cocinabar seems to be fairly unique in being, from what I can tell, a gourmet version of Mexican food brought together by a culinary visionary; which may sound off-putting and pretentious, and is doubtless why the place is so popular with the Alamo Heights set, but the fact is that the food is, quite frankly, fucking amazing. My wife heard about the place a couple of years ago, so we went along one Thursday evening just to try it out, then went back on a more or less weekly basis for the next six months. It's Mexican food and nothing in the spirit of Heston Blumenthal, but done really, really well, and with a twist which distinguishes it as a fairly unique variation to the norm. It's actually difficult to define what the difference is but it's pronounced. The owner seems to be from Michoacan, so maybe that's a factor. Anyway, their greatest dish - in my view - is the Enchildas Aztecas which entails fried potatoes alongside the usual stuff and has a faint suggestion of caramelisation; it's actually a variation on the more familiar enchiladas norteñas but knocks the basic formula well and truly out of the park, as we say in Americaland, probably. Another plus is that we became such regulars for a while that we're on first name terms with half of the staff, who are a fantastic bunch - particularly Pedro who even remembered that it was our wedding anniversary.
Bandera Jalisco, 14320 Nacogdoches Rd, TX 78247.
This was probably the first bright orange diner with a cartoon chili pepper wearing a sombrero painted on the window for which I developed a near religious devotion, and I seem to remember a year during which we ate there at least once a week. We originally discovered Bandera Jalisco* through driving past on the way to some other place and figuring we'd give them a shot. I had the mixed plate which comprises shrimp and skirt steak grilled on the same skillet, allowing for the flavours to entwine - along with the usual salad, salsa, Mexican rice and so on - and it was fucking phenomenal. Inevitably we eventually got burned out and took to experimenting with other diners - which is probably where Los Dos Laredos came in. The owners expanded, doubling the size of the restaurant and fancifying things a little, and the skirt steak seemed a little chewier for a while. We return maybe every couple of months these days, like visiting a former girlfriend (or boyfriend in my wife's case, I guess) and while I'm not sure it's ever quite recaptured the magic of our first year - some of which may have occurred in my head, in any case - Bandera Jalisco is still pretty damn great.
La Fonda, 8633 Crownhill Blvd, TX 78209.
If the restaurant was never quite responsible for the greatest thing you've ever eaten, La Fonda was pretty decent back when it was situated on Sunset Ridge; but it changed somewhat when they were bought out by Jim Hasslocher's Frontier Enterprises and relocated to a lot opposite the company headquarters. I've got a lot of love for Jim's - as is the name of their principal chain of diners - but Mexican food was never quite their forté, and La Fonda is now, roughly speaking, the Mexican restaurant for people who don't actually like Mexican food that much - which is difficult to state without it seeming like a criticism, although it sort of is, but the bottom line is that you probably won't need to worry about anything on the menu being too hot. That said, the food is nevertheless decent of its type - that being Mexican food for white people - and I've never had anything bad there, plus their fish tacos are pretty great. Should someone from New York who knows everything ever tell you actually I think you'll find you're eating Tex-Mex rather than Mexican cuisine if you live in San Antonio, they probably mean La Fonda.
Tomatillos, 3210 Broadway, TX 78209.
...or Ptomaintillos as my wife rather uncharitably calls it, in reference to some food poisoning incident occurring way back in the fourteenth century and which I'm sure wouldn't happen these days. Nevertheless, this is one place where we've been shown to a seat, then walked out after ten minutes of being sat there like wankers without so much as a sniff of anyone bringing us a menu or drinkies; so it's never quite been a first choice. The food on the other hand, when and if it arrives, is mostly decent, and usually enough so as to justify your having gone there in the first place. Tomatillos might be deemed the Mexican restaurant for people who don't actually like Mexican food that much but who like it at least a little more than they do at La Fonda, so I suppose you could say it's La Fonda without the fear of chilli peppers. It has been said that it's hard to get fajitas wrong, and Tomatillos fajitas are accordingly great, but their stuffed peppers are also generally wonderful, if that's any indication. Also, you'll generally hear more Spanish spoken amongst the clientele than at La Fonda, so that's probably another indication. Let's just say that Tomatillos is a great restaurant which occasionally has a bad day and leave it at that.
Blanco Cafe, 1720 Blanco Rd, TX 78212.
When I looked the place up on the internet for the sake of the street address, I discovered there to be two other Blanco cafes in San Antonio and they're both called the Original Blanco Cafe, which seems logistically debatable. Anyway, the Blanco Cafe to which I'm referring here is the only one which is actually on the Blanco Road, has been patronised by at least three generations of my wife's family, and I've never even heard of the other two, wonderful though I'm sure they are. I gather the real Blanco Cafe has a reputation extending far beyond the city limits. My friend and former tutor Dave accordingly made a point of eating there when he and his wife were travelling around the States a few years back, although I'm not sure how he heard about the place. In terms of food, it's approximately in the bright orange diner with a cartoon chili pepper wearing a sombrero painted on the window category - despite being neither orange nor decorated with anthropomorphic peppers - and yet, as with many such diners, is more or less its own thing with its own distinctive culinary style. No-one else even comes close to Blanco's chicken flautas, which therefore represent their signature dish for me, and which negates any possible grumbling about how they don't bring you the customary chips while you wait. That said, I've never had anything from their menu which wasn't great, and it all tastes unusually fresh, and so much so as to work as an effective restorative if you're feeling a little under the weather.
*: Discovered in the sense of Christopher Colombus discovering America, obviously.
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