Chico's Tacos: The Thing to Do in El Paso
Written: Apr 03 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Bliss.
Cons: Vocabularical confusion.
The Bottom Line: If you go to El Paso without eating at Chico's Tacos at least once, I fear you will have missed the point of your visit entirely.
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| Sloucho's Full Review: Entertainment |
With respectful apologies to those who will refuse to believe that a dining experience can qualify as 'entertainment,' I will say that I'm not sure that one should categorize the consumption of coffee and beignets at the Cafe du Monde in New Orleans as a dining experience. Even if you hate chicory coffee and overly sweet pastries, you must eat at the Cafe du Monde when you visit New Orleans. If you haven't spilled powdered sugar on yourself while watching a juggler and listening to a street saxophonist, then I'm afraid your trip to the Big Easy was incomplete. And if you go to El Paso without eating at Chico's Tacos at least once, I fear you will have missed the point of your visit entirely.
There are some extraordinary myths concerning the sauce that drenches an order of Chico's Tacos. Everyone in El Paso swears that the sauce is a cure for a hangover (even though El Pasoans know that menudo is the real cure for a hangover); and everyone claims to know someone who completely dissolved a penny in the sauce back in junior high school.
I suspect that we associate Chico's Tacos with hangovers because it is somehow impossible to get drunk in El Paso without winding up at one of the four Chico's Tacos locations in the city and allowing the chunks of tortilla and cheese to soak up the alcohol in one's stomach. As for whether the sauce can actually dissolve a penny, all I can say from first hand experience is that it's better than Brasso for making the grimiest coins look shiny and new. The tacos are served in little paper cartons that leak. The sauce served with thousands of orders of tacos has actually dissolved little troughs into the tables in the restaurant. The ruts in the laminated tables are where you are supposed to put your order of tacos; it's good manners in a Chico's Tacos to contribute the acidity of one's meal to the development of pre-existing table divots. Don't go starting your own project.
The most important thing to know about the tacos at Chico's Tacos is that they aren't tacos at all, but flautas. Whereas the tortillas of tacos are usually left open, the tortillas of flautas are rolled into a tight cylinder and fried. Although you can stuff cheese or lettuce or whatever you like on top of the meat in a taco, you can't really put anything inside a flauta without removing the meat that is already inside it. The flautas at Chico's Tacos are served in a broth of tomato sauce and grease sprinkled with cheese. But even though they're really flautas, you should call them 'tacos' because that's what everyone calls them.
As is the case at the Cafe du Monde, the prices at Chico's Tacos are extraordinarily (even irresistibly) reasonable. A single order of tacos (three flautas) is available for just under a dollar. But you don't want a single order. If you're going to eat at Chico's Tacos just once in your life, I recommend that you take a companion and order the following:
1 double order of Chico's Tacos;
1 cheeseburger;
1 order of french fries; and
2 cups of water.
No matter what time of day you go to Chico's, ordering itself is likely to be an ordeal. The line for food starts at the cash register (customers pay when they place their orders) and generally weaves all the way through the restaurant and outside the building. Expect the line to be backed up at least halfway around the building late on a Friday or Saturday night. Standing in one of these nocturnal lines is part of the experience. Chico's is where all the high school kids in El Paso congregate for grub. You don't so much smell the alcohol on their breath as feel it evaporating from their skin, as most of them are stopping for a bite to eat after a night of partying in Juarez. The opportunities for people-watching are tremendous. The only thing more compellingly young than a fifteen-year-old philosopher is a hungry, drunken fifteen-year-old philosophizing about being hungry and drunk.
Once you get to the cash register and place your order, you will be given a number. Your wait will be fifteen to twenty minutes, which is roughly the amount of time that it will take for you to secure a table. Snagging a table at the perennially crowded Chico's Tacos is what makes having a companion so important. Once you have secured a table, one of you will have to go back to pick up the order when your number is called. If both of you go, well, so much for your table. (Oh, and as for claiming a table with a purse or a coat or something like that, just remember that you're dining with drunken teenagers whose respect for personal property is not likely to be at its zenith.)
When you pick up your order, the person who hands you the tray will hiss at you. The "Ssss?" that you will hear is not a barb, but a question about whether or not you want jalapeno sauce with your order. The people handing out the orders are always in a hurry and have reduced the word "sauce" to a sibilant query. The sauce of tomato and grease that your tacos are already soaking in is not at all spicy. It's main purpose is to make the rock-hard tacos soft enough to chew and to help the cheese stick to the fried tortilla shells. If you want heat, you will need the jalapeno sauce that is only available by request. As nearly as I can tell, the sauce is pure jalapenos that have been boiled and tossed into a blender and then poured into the same one-ounce paper cups that most readers will probably associate with the ketchup dispensers at Wendy's franchises.
When the person who hands you your order growls, "Ssss?", you should say "Two please." Since sauces are served in bundles of three, you will be given six little cups of sauce--one for each of your six tacos (even if they are really flautas).
Bliss! Bliss! Bliss!
Return to your table and dump all six cups of jalapeno sauce into your double order of tacos. Stir well with the plastic fork that you have been provided. The tacos may still be too hard to consume at this point. But that's what the cheeseburger and fries are for. You are about to consume the all-American meal in the way that God (who is certainly from El Paso) intended. Dip the cheeseburger into the tomato-jalapeno sauce that you have just created.
Feeling self-conscious? Wondering if you're making a fool of yourself as an outsider? Just look around you. The people at the table next to you are handling their burgers the same way. El Pasoans love the tacos at Chico's Tacos. But what really makes the experience special is dipping a cheeseburger and fries into the sauce that comes with the tacos. It's what we El Pasoans did for lunch during high school. And it's what we continue to do as adults.
You've just paid roughly five dollars for the single experience that everyone who has ever moved away from El Paso is sure to recreate upon returning to the city.
Now skedaddle to your hotel. You're going to have to make a trip to the bathroom soon. And believe me when I say you don't even want to see the bathrooms at a Chico's Tacos.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Couples
Best Time to Travel Here: Mar - May
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Epinions.com ID:
Sloucho
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 - Top 500 |
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Member: Mike Davis
Location: Philadelphia
Reviews written: 199
Trusted by: 248 members
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Read my reviews in order to heal the sick and control the weather. Seriously.
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