Anonymous wrote:Cactuc Cantina is has the worst food- they give you lots of it, but it's all crap.Even Haydee's in Mt.Pleasant has better food though they are from Salvador.
I'd go to Lauriol Plaza or Casa Oaxaca.

I worked at Cactus many years ago and I have news for you: they are owned by the same group and the CC dishes are the exact same ones as at Lauriol Plaza. LP just has a nicer atmosphere, which seems to be making you think the food is better! But the dishes are identical...

Uncle Julio's.

Anonymous wrote:My favorite is cactus cantina... but it's not near the metro at all.

Second this. If you metro to Tenley you can catch a 30 bus down to it. Not a Guapo's fan.

I will give a shout out to the "gas station taco bar" just off Sam Eig Hwy near Washingtonian Center in Gaithersburg.

Now you're talking. I'll have to check it out.
Also not Tex Mex, but great tacos, at the taco trucks outside the Gaithersburg DMV.

I cant believe no one mentioned Anitas! So good and my DH from New Mexico loves it.

Anonymous wrote:Well, I'm not going write a dissertation about it like PP, but Tex Mex staples come from Northern Mexican cuisine. I am from Houston and there is a difference between more commerical Tex Mex restaurants and smaller family owned restaurants.

Good thing you didn't. Tex-Mex came from Chihuahua. Sonoran and Baja Ca del Norte (other border states) are very different (eg flour tortillas, pinto not black beans, a lot more seafood, different spices). Sonora even has it's own appellation of tequila called bacanora. As somebody from the Az-Sonoran border I hate it when people generalize all border food as Tex-Mex.

I'm thinking of venturing down to Richmond, as there is a Chuy's there.

Another complaining Texan who agrees that there is no great Tex Mex around here. But Uncle Julio's and Cactus Cantina does ok in a pinch. And yes, there's a lot of bad Tex Mex in TX, but there's some pretty amazing places there that I despair will ever migrate up here. And PS the salsa at Guapo's is a horror.

I had high hopes for Cyclone Anaya's out in Merrifield, it was ok but not in the same league as the food I had living in Austin.

Rio Grande!

Well, I'm not going write a dissertation about it like PP, but Tex Mex staples come from Northern Mexican cuisine. I am from Houston and there is a difference between more commerical Tex Mex restaurants and smaller family owned restaurants.

12:36 it a combo of a few food regions, a little Mexican, native American, Spanish, and Moroccan.

Tex-Mex is a Texas version of Mexican food and it's a commercial cuisine for the most part. It mostly exists in restaurants, but it was adapted from Tejano home cooking. The Spanish pulled out of Texas in the late 1700s and left behind Spanish-speaking mission Indians who became known as the Tejanos. They came from Native American stock and they were really not Mexicans; they had never lived in Mexico. They had been acculturated by the Spanish missionaries here in Texas.

Tex-Mex cuisine is descended from their tradition, and also from a lot of Canary Islanders who were brought to San Antonio by the Spanish to try to expand the colonization of Texas. The Canary Islanders brought with them a Berber flavor signature -- Moroccan food. There was a lot of cumin, garlic and chili, and those flavors, which are really dominant in chili con carne, became the flavor signature of Tex-Mex. It's very different from Mexican food. Diana Kennedy is prone to say that Tex-Mex includes way too much cumin. But if you compare it to Arab food, you suddenly understand where that flavor signature comes from.

What is Tex-Mex exactly?

I am from Texas and Uncle Julio's is my favorite. BTW, for the complaining Texans on this thread, Austin Grill (hate it!) and Uncle Julio's are Texas-based chains. There is plenty of bad tex mex in Texas too.

Rosa Mexicano is definitely not Tex-Mex. I do like their guac and margarita's.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard great things about Mi Concina and was disgusted. I'm a vegetarian, so there isn't much for me on the menu, but my cheesy enchiladas looked and tasted like they were filled with ballpark cheese whiz. Haven't been back.

Yes, I was so looking forward to it and what a disappointment! Bland and boring. And up the street, Rosa Mexicano is way overpriced for not very good food. Oh, and drinks where the alcohol seems to be dispensed with an eyedropper.

Rosa Mexicano is the PF Chang's of Mexican food. Created in a marketing department, with the objective of haunting every upscale mall and shopping area in America.