Enrique’s Restaurant – Midlife Crisis
Enrique’s Restaurant
5230 Kostoryz Rd # 1
Corpus Christi, TX 78415
361-851-2864
Chorizo & Egg – $1.39
Carne Guisada – $1.88
Over the past few weeks my life has become confusing and I’ve had this feeling that it’s missing something. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a happy man. I love my wife and kid. I’m professionally satisfied. But at a certain point a lot of guys start to realize their youth is rushing away from them like a falling tide and it’s not coming back. Some guys do the unspeakable and transgress the covenant of marriage. Some buy a Harley and hang out on weekends with other white collar types in a similar place – dressed up for show to disguise the creeping malaise of eminent mortality. Kevin & Shelly could be spotted cruising the strip in a Dodge Prowler this week, and when the thrill was exhausted from that as it inevitably is with cheap thrills they re-upped and bought a new Lexus. I have simpler tastes – I pawned my Canon 40D DSLR and headed down the squalid sidewalks of taco row: Kostoryz.
I’d heard tell of this one little number – Enrique’s. “The bean tacos are the best you’ll ever have,” they said. I had to find out myself if 25 years of satisfied customers could be wrong. As we shuffled up to the front door of Enrique’s Restaurant past the tawdry ‘Romance Room’ bar we weren’t sure of what we could expect. Once inside we were seated at a big table and looked at the expensively trimmed wood paneling and highbrow fixtures that belied the fact that this place sits in a run-down shopping center. The waitresses brought the food to the table and we noticed they must have all left their cotton uniforms in the dryer too long this morning. The service was good. The coffee was good. They offered a broad range of tacos – catering to any taste. There was even a spam & egg taco on the menu – for those with the most depraved appetites. The tortillas were homemade thick – both flour and corn. The chorizo and egg was decent, and the carne guisada was better than average. Something about the tacos when all put together was at once greater than the sum of its parts and less than hoped for. The star of the show was the beans. Sultry and greasy they defy description, sitting in pool of what I think was bacon drippings. They were so good, but it felt so wrong eating them. By the time we were leaving I felt strangely unsatisfied, despondent and more confused than when I’d come in. ‘I’m so sorry’ ran through my head as I rehearsed it. I hope my regular taqueria will take me back.
From the Hat
I write this epistle today with thoughts about life’s high noon. I’ve started seeing the telltale signs of age. Today its ears, but eyes, knees, and who knows what else will plague me in the coming years. I guess it happens to everything. Time and Gravity don’t play favorites. But without that long passage of time, we’d not have long-time friends. Today, and for the weekend, my long-time best friend Jim R. is in town running from the World Championship Bar-b-que Goat Cook-off in Brady, Texas. He’s here in Sur de Tejas with a truck full of drum kit. We’re hoping to drag Ian into a couple of jam sessions this weekend in Papalote.
The mob tacoed at Enrique’s this morning. The tacos were good, not great, but well worth the trip. For you gearheads, I had something called Carne Fritas. Thin-sliced little disks of fried beef in a savory sauce with tomatoes and lettuce on a homemade corn tortilla. The corn tarp was good. Could be me, but it could have used salt. I like them a bit thinner, but for you thick corn tortilla fans, it was a good one. I also had a picadillo taco. Basically ground hamburger taco meat with potatoes added. It was tasty – served on a good homemade flour tortilla.
The Star of the show today was the salsa – a very fresh-tasting squirt bottle of red delicious with plenty of heat. I considered asking to take some to go. The coffee was good too. It was the standard café coffee that you find everywhere. Good honest coffee with no pretentious names and sizing conventions. The place was clean. The woodwork on the uncluttered walls is really well done and meant to be there in a couple of decades.
As we left, I noticed the shopping center was showing signs of middle age too. But with just a little imagination, I could see gentrification happening in the next several years. My guess is that Enrique’s will still be around for that future facelift. I’ll be there too, having a taco.
Salud
My ancestry is Irish, with a little english, dutch, french-canadian thrown in for good measure. I am fortunate enough to have been born in Texas, and to have had a lot of interaction with the blended Mexican American culture of Texas. What I’m trying to say is I’m an outsider, but I’m not an ignorant outsider. I make these observations with a fair amount of experience – what with having spent more than a little time in Mexico. Mexico has had a profound effect on my life, both good and in one case tragically. So when you read what I have to say consider this: I am trying to be funny but I am dead serious about what I’m doing. I think the taco in all its forms is the perfect food. I have a deep love for tacos and for Corpus Christi where my family goes back on two sides for three generations.
All this said, I’m still a gringo. I think it helps me to make objective observations but there are things about which I know very little when it comes to Mexican Food. Take, for example, Menudo. I know what it is, I know what it tastes like, and I know what it’s good for but beyond that I’m still in the dark. So one fine Sunday morning I called upon an insider – Dee, my father-in-law – to bring his not insignificant experience to bear on the subject of Menudo.
know that it’s good, at least at Sonny’s. I got the small bowl and it was still pretty big, though it looks tiny next to the 500 ml bottle of Mexican Coke. Dee would frequently dip a rolled-up homemade corn tortilla into the soup and eat it. I ordered a Chicharron and Egg to go with it and it was really good – fried but not fried out. The service was good and they called Dee by name. It was almost as if we were eating at a friend’s house.
