Little Mexico, 02/04/08

After much deliberation, and even a quick consultation of the Fearless Critic, Deputy Mike and I decided to try the cheese enchiladas at Little Mexico, on South First. We met there at 6:30, and managed to sit out on the colorful patio - yes, in February (reason no. 3,904,288 to love Austin).

Now, I've been to Little Mexico once before, on Easter Sunday, 2006. T and Jason and I went there for Easter lunch, and I had cheese enchiladas with regular chili con carne sauce, and they were good.

This time, my vegetarian brain noticed that their menu featured three different types of vegetarian, cheese enchiladas: regular (with ranchera sauce), queso fresco (with ranchera sauce), and Monterey Jack and poblano pepper (with ranchera sauce). My stupid, hungry brain mistook "queso fresco" for "queso blanco", so I ordered them, hoping the cheese would approximate the warm white meltiness of La Hacienda queso. Of course, when the enchiladas were delivered, I could see immediately that they were not queso blanco, but nevermind: they looked very tasty nonetheles, with their crumbly white cheese and pool of ranchera.

Meanwhile, Mike had joined me in an act of solidarity and ordered the Jack and poblano enchiladas, which, upon arrival, looked just like a typical Tex-Mex enchilada plate, all melty cheese and gravy-like sauce.



I dug into my dinner, and was immediately disappointed. We got three enchiladas, which was great (although they were small, and I wasn't really full after my meal - which I attribute mainly to the flavor void which I shall describe next). The first bite was only tortilla, and the tortilla wasn't great (though it was soft and had that prominent maize flavor I look for). The sauce proved thin and without courage. The cheese was flavorless - it might've been soy cheese, honestly. Looking at it, seeing its ricotta-like crumbliness, I had expected something fresh, sweet, creamy, maybe even a little tangy to complement the expected piquantness of the sauce - but it was nothing more than a tasteless mucilage swimming in a rust-colored, dilute pool of savorless anemic liquid.

Then there was the cheese. I assume it was actually cheese, though it exhibited few qualities of that fine, fine foodstuff. Each rolled up tortilla, usually so teasingly full of greasy promise, was filled with a mysterious, spongy stick of whiteness that I can only assume was baked queso fresco. It was dry, slightly rubbery, and - yes - devoid of flavor.

The beans, however, were very good - clearly containing some sort of swine byproduct. The rice was slightly better than average, and gave hints of having been fried, which is a method that improves pretty much any dish. Also, the salsa was great - hot, cilantro-infused, with some surprising sweet undertones. (Looking back on it, I probably should've drowned my whole sorry plate in the stuff.) The chips were of Polvo's quality - i.e. thick and crap (but fresh-ish).

Nevertheless, after twenty minutes, my plate was empty.



I would be tempted to give this plate only one star, I was so disappointed, except for the fact that Mike's Monterey Jack and poblano enchiladas were rather good (not great, but solid). They had the requisite melty cheese, a slightly more serious sauce, and the addition of the poblano peppers provided a slight twist on the typical Tex-Mex version. I would be willing to give Little Mexico a try again in a few months, to try a different dinner.



Rating: 2/5



Little Mexico
2304 S 1st St
Austin, TX 78704
(512) 462-2188

A word about cheese.

Speaking of enchilada cheese -

When I was living in the UK, I learned to make a lot of Tex-Mex myself. While most of the large chain groceries like Tesco and Sainsbury's carry the full line of Old El Paso products, somehow that just didn't quite cut it. Hence the sauce recipe below. I was able to pretty well replicate most of my favorites from home: salsas, refried beans, beef tacos, even my Stella's Famous Guacamole (thanks to those famous Israeli avocados).

But one thing was always missing, and from my favorite dish: cheese.

You can't make cheese enchiladas with cheddar. Well, you can make a heavily cheesy pile of carbohydrates that the English might be fooled by, but you cannot replicate real cheese enchiladas. So I expanded my repertoire of fillings. I tried Cheddar, Cheshire, Gloucester, , Leicester, Five Counties - even Stilton. I realized it wasn't so much the flavor that was off as it was the texture, and, more specifically, the meltability. So I searched even further afield. Mozzarella was obvious, but the result was decidedly un-Mexican in flavor. Gruyère - shockingly - was the best. It was melty to begin with! So I then tried mixing gruyère with cheddar. The result was a tasty mountain of cheese - but in no way resembled cheese enchiladas.

Finally, in desperation, I clandestinely smuggled a Kennedy-family-sized log of Velveeta into the country. At least the stuff melts, right? It looked great. I even took a photograph of my first Velveeta-based attempt at a plate of cheese enchiladas, intending to email it to my parents as proof that, despite the tiny refrigerators and lack of religion, England wasn't such a dismal place, after all. I pulled the plate toward me and hungrily attacked the first of four rolls of the delicacy. It looked right, it smelled right... but it was so, so wrong.

Velveeta isn't cheese.

Later, I found out that a lot of old school Tex-Mex places use another processed cheese - apparently it's some sort of food industry secret, but I hear it's made by Land O Lakes and is only available to wholesale restaurant buyers. I guess it's like the Lexus of processed American cheese product. It's like upper class Velveeta.

Anyway, I never mastered the cheese enchilada the whole time I was in the UK, much to my shame and disappointment.

There's a great related article by my favorite Texpert, Robb Walsh, a food writer for the Houston Chronicle, here.