El Gallito de Jalisco

When I was young, I used to hate hot sauce. Just loathed it. So the thought of huevos rancheros never appealed to me. Why would I want to drown some perfectly good eggs over easy in a sauce that could potentially give me heartburn?

Because they're really good like that...that's why. And for $2.99, you get a big plate with huevos rancheros, potatoes, beans, and 2 tortillas. For $0.75 more, you also get a heaping side of bacon. Value like that is pretty hard to beat.

El Gallito de Jalisco is along Wurzbach at the corner of Datapoint, in a shopping center right across from the Bill Miller's there. Whenever I've gone, I've had the huevos rancheros, but everything that I've seen come out of the kitchen looks good, and the place is usually full of locals. Always a good sign with a Mexican restaurant. Most of the waitresses seem to speak nothing but Spanish, but they're kind to those of us who don't.

And This Is Why I Don't Eat Chinese Anymore

So waaaaaay back in the day, about 4 years ago, before I was laid off from Qwest, we used to go to a restaurant called China Inn. We were there on a fairly regular basis...at least a couple of times a month. Two of us always had the triple delight, extra spicy, and the other person always ordered sweet and sour chicken, with the sauce on the side. The service was always great, and the food come out piping hot in huge portions. The vegetables were never overcooked and it was a great value for the money.

I've gone a few times in the years since I left Qwest, and it's been decent, but it never quite tasted the same. I attributed part of that to not having the same group of people with me, but today, I picked up food for the co-worker that had introduced me to China Inn so that we could have lunch together at her place. I got each of us a triple delight and an order of sweet and sour chicken for her daughter.

I can't tell you how disappointed I was.

I could barely see the shrimp in the triple delight. They were so small as to be almost indistinguishable from the pieces of chicken. The sauce was too thin and runny. For something that I had ordered extra spicy, there was maybe a one jalapeno kick to it, and that in no way qualifies as extra spicy. And the chicken and beef had been cut up into pieces that were pitifully small. This was also a problem with the sweet and sour chicken. Rather than having big plump chicken strips, the meal came with such small chicken bites that I thought they had ripped a Chicken McNugget in half and tossed it into the fryer. There was very little chicken to be found under the breading, and what was there has been overcooked. How you manage to dry out deep fried chicken pieces is beyond me. It also had an odd aftertaste that I'm not sure how to describe.

All of the lunch specials come with fried rice and your choice of an egg roll or crab meat rangoon, plus soup. I didn't even touch my soup after I saw that my friend's egg drop soup looked like radioactive gelatin and had the consistency of such. The fried rice was decent enough. So was the crabmeat rangoon, though I did expect 2 of them per plate and not just one.

I don't think that I'll be going back here anytime soon. Chinese super buffets are popping up on every street corner, and while they might not always have the best food, I can usually find at least a couple of things that I like there, plus, I sort of know what to expect. It really makes me sad when a place that I used to love so much has gone so far downhill.

Too Damn Big

Yes, I know....we never expect to hear me say that anything is too big, but the new Chacho's at 410 & Perrin-Beitel is just ridiculously monstrously huge.

Known in San Antonio for their jumbo sized 32 oz. margaritas and one of the more extensive menus in town, this new 3rd location not only offers the normal menu, but also has a coffee bar, a bakery, an ice cream stand, a pizza place, a fruteria/aguas frescas stand, and a taco and burrito bar. In fact, the place is so big that it's now called Chacho's and Chalucia's and is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

From the outside, the restaurant appears to be 3 stories tall and has 4 drive thru lanes. Once you get inside, you see that there are only 2 very tall stories. Tall enough for a 4 level children's playset that goes almost all the way to the ceiling.

Did I mention that there's also a bar here? Located right next to the children's area.

At the Chacho's at Callaghan & I-10, most of the time, you have to be 21 or over to get in. That's because most of us know that the only real reason to go to Chacho's is to either: 1) Drink lots of margaritas or 2) To gorge ourselves on King Kong Nachos (8 different types of nachos buried under mounds of cheese, with a bowl of queso in the center). And the only reason anyone needs to have 8 different kinds of nachos is because they had too many margaritas. Readers of the San Antonio Express-News who voted in the 2004 Reader's Choice Awards picked Chacho's for the Best Margaritas in Town.

Putting the bar and the children's area right next together...there's a bright idea for you.

"Daddy...can I go play on the slides"

"Sure...just stay where I can see you from here at the bar" (where Dad proceeds to order his 3rd jumbo-sized margarita)

So I'm thinking that some of these parents are probably going to have a few too many and then drive home with their kids, or they're not going to pay any attention to what their kids are doing or where they're at while they're getting their drink on.

In relation to the food, I ordered the Chacho's Favorites plate. That came with a beef fajita taco, a chicken flauta, a snack-sized order of bean and cheese nachos, rice, guacamole, and 2 tortillas for $5.79. Plenty of food for a little bit of money, this is definitely a better value that Taco Cabana. The fajitas weren't drenched in spices and the meat was soft and tender. The rice had a good flavor to it and wasn't sopping wet in tomato sauce and all mushy. I would have been happier if the chicken flauta hadn't been topped off with guacamole and sour cream. I prefer to be able to dip my flauta in those things myself so that I can control how much goes on.

There were a few food issues that need to be corrected:

1) They need to find a way to fix the nachos. The problem with the nachos is that they bury the chips under a mountain of cheddar cheese (or cheese appropriate to the kind of nacho that you ordered) and then stick the nachos under the broiler to melt the cheese. What results is an impenetrable layer of cheese that won't come apart. When you try to pull one nacho out, everything on the plate comes up, resulting in some huge sloppy mess. If you're going to pile the cheese on like that, use some kind of processed cheese that melts smoothly and pulls apart nicely.

2) The friend that I was with ordered a 1/4 size order of spicy beef nachos. Now if you're in San Antonio, and you're going to call something "spicy" it had damn well better have some kick to it. At least a one or two (out of four) jalapeno kick to it. These nachos had no kick to them, at least not for virtually anyone who lives here. We all drench everything in salsa or jalapenos. So something spicy needs to have some kind of mild burn to it that's going to make us reach for our water.

3) Be consistent with your portion sizes. Chacho's offers up certain items as snack-sized, 1/4 sized, 1/2 sized, and full-sized. My friend ordered a 1/4 size of the spicy beef nachos. My plate came with a snack size of bean and cheese nachos. When my friend's husband arrived to join us, she ordered him a 1/4 sized order of beef fajita nachos. What came out was half the size of what she had received. When they went to ask them why the order was smaller, they were told that the portion size was correct and that my friend had originally received a 1/2 size order of spicy beef nachos and that they had screwed up on her order. When they complained that the sizes were different from what was offered at the other Chacho's locations, they were told that the snack sized portion was now smaller.

4) The service. The staff was rude and didn't seem to be trained. As I described, they can't figure out what the portion sizes were. The cashiers were slow when taking orders and my cashier was rude and impatient with a little boy who wanted some Sprite to drink. And when we were getting ice cream for my friend's daughter, the employees working the ice cream bar seemed generally annoyed to be there. Ice creams were mislabeled and when we pointed to one ice cream and said that she wanted a scoop of vanilla, we were told that the ice cream wasn't vanilla and that it was actually cheesecake. We pointed out that the label said vanilla and the employees started arguing about what kind of ice cream it was and who had labeled it incorrectly and started throwing ice creams labels at one another.

5) Get someone to direct customers inside the restaurant. You've got like 6 places to order food at, and none of them has a clear line to stand in to place your order at, so it looks like there's just a mob of customers gathered around each register.

6) The parking. The parking lot was packed at 4 pm on a Sunday afternoon. They should have built a parking garage to go along with this place.

For those of us who don't like children or think that getting a babysitter and a designated driver is a better idea, go to the Chacho's on Callaghan. The only way I'll be back at this one is if I'm going placing an order at the drive-thru.