The New State of Chilaquiles in Austin, Texas (or, what a long, strange trip it's been).

150+ plates of chilaquiles in Austin, Texas. © Ryan Schierling

As a lot of you know, we've been on a epic, epicurean quest – a grand gustatory gamble with breaking the fast deep in the heart of Texas.

We've been scouring Austin for the very best chilaquiles it has to offer. We've torn apart the town, top to bottom, for almost fifteen years sampling both highbrow and humble versions of this traditional Mexican dish. 

There are no shortage of restaurants offering up their take on what shouldn't really be more than crisp fresh-fried tortilla chips (totopos) simmered with a red or green sauce until just slightly softened, crowned with a pair of properly-cooked eggs. With such a simple preparation, you'd think it would be difficult to screw up this classic.

We weren't looking for haute cuisine a la Mexicana, we just wanted an honest, reliable, simple Sunday morning comfort-food breakfast at a joint where everyone might eventually know us (and our broken Spanish).

There were standouts, certainly, but just as often there were store-bought chips, soggy and swimming in sub-par sauces, eggs that were under-cooked, over-cooked or not even offered as an option. There were some surprises, and there were some disappointments. 

There were also some stunningly brilliant breakfasts. 

If a restaurant presented only one salsa option for chilaquiles, Julie and I would typically order the same dish. If a restaurant had both verdes (green) and rojos (red), we'd order one of each. The majority of the time, we'd order eggs over-easy. If we knew the eggs were hopefully going to be happy eggs (see $14-plus chilaquiles), I'd go for sunny-side-up. Beans, potatoes and accoutrements (if available) were taken into consideration, as was the coffee or aguas frescas. The overall experience was key, but really, it all came down to the chilaquiles. 

After eating 150-plus different restaurant and food truck plates of chilaquiles, I can say we've done our due diligence, and now, we humbly present to you establishments that Julie and I both agreed have the finest chilaquiles in Austin. These are our favorites, the places we return to time and time again. 

These chilaquiles are Austin's best of the best. 

The 'New' State of Chilaquiles in Austin, Texas.

100 plates of chilaquiles. © Ryan Schierling

(FGHD editor's note: Originally updated March 2016 for the AFBA City Guide with 100 plates of chilaquiles.)

As a lot of you know, we've been on a epic, epicurean quest – a grand gustatory gamble with breaking the fast deep in the heart of Texas.

We've been scouring Austin for the very best chilaquiles it has to offer. We've torn apart the town, top to bottom, for more than two years sampling both highbrow and humble versions of this traditional Mexican dish. 

There are no shortage of restaurants offering up their take on what shouldn't really be more than crisp fresh-fried tortilla chips (totopos) simmered with a red or green sauce until just slightly softened, crowned with a pair of properly-cooked eggs. With such a simple preparation, you'd think it would be difficult to screw up this classic.

We weren't looking for haute cuisine a la Mexicana, we just wanted an honest, reliable, simple Sunday morning comfort-food breakfast at a joint where everyone might eventually know us (and our broken Spanish).

There were standouts, certainly, but just as often there were store-bought chips, soggy and swimming in sub-par sauces, eggs that were under-cooked, over-cooked or not even offered as an option. There were some surprises, and there were some disappointments. 

There were also some stunningly brilliant breakfasts. 

If a restaurant presented only one sauce option for chilaquiles, Julie and I would typically order the same dish. If a restaurant had both verdes (green) and rojos (red), we'd order one of each. The majority of the time, we'd order eggs over-easy. If we knew the eggs were going to be happy eggs (see $9 chilaquiles), I'd go for sunny-side-up. Beans, potatoes and accoutrements (if available) were taken into consideration, as was the coffee or aguas frescas. The overall experience was key, but really, it all came down to the chilaquiles. 

After eating 100 different plates of chilaquiles, we've done our due diligence, and now, we humbly present to you ten establishments that Julie and I both agreed have the finest chilaquiles in Austin. These are our favorites, the places we return to time and time again. 

These chilaquiles are the best of the best. 

Sweet, hot, pickled, beer-battered bliss.

(L) Sweet, habanero pickled onions. (R) Fried, sweet, habanero pickled onions. © Ryan Schierling

Ultimately, this all started on a clearance table at our local grocer with a Texas brand of hot, sweet, pickled onions being blown out at 50-cents a jar. Regularly $5.99 each, we bought four, and were surprised at the simplicity of the sweet, spicy, clean and crisp flavors. They worked on all kinds of sandwiches, were divine in deviled eggs, great grilled, fabulous on top of steak, and they shined in salads. We were a bit distressed that this product wasn't popular enough for the store to keep around and we were afraid we'd never see it again. It's not the first time this has happened with something we really liked (but found out about a little late), so we figured we'd better reverse-imagineer it. 

There were six ingredients – onions, vinegar, sugar, habanero peppers, salt and citric acid. Based on percentages of sodium, carbohydrates, sugar and vitamin C on the label, we were able to approximate salt, sugar and citric acid components per serving, and per jar. Taste-testing got us pretty spot on with the pickling liquid, though we weren't sure if the onions were originally white, yellow or sweet, so we went with white based on what we had on hand. Of course we didn't hold back on the habanero, because we roll caliente, and they were goooood. 

We tried them quick-pickled, then left those in the fridge for a two-week pickle to see how to texture and flavors would change. Later, we did them properly canned in a hot water bath for longer-term storage. The longer the jars sit, the more the flavors and the heat intensify.

But I couldn't leave well enough alone. I kept thinking about deep-fried pickled things, and how these onions might taste if we beer-battered them using a spicy pilsner and took them to the hot oil-filled cast iron. The result was surprising, but not terribly unexpected – they were ridiculously good. 

Sauceless, these are amazing onion rings. They are crispy, tangy, spicy, sweet and salty without ever seeing a swipe of Ranch or buttermilk dressing, or ketchup/catsup, honey mustard or whatever other crazy things you dip your onion rings in. We made a two-pepper ketchup just in case, and it paired perfectly with the hot little ringlets.

It's time to make the doña.

Dos brujas – red and green doña sauces (and one frightened mollete). © Ryan Schierling

This recipe is nothing new, especially to Austinites. It certainly didn't originate here, but doña sauce is a bonafide Austin staple, and it has been long-studied, dissected, perfected and repeated by others well before Julie and I ever thought to make it ourselves last year. It is a puréed, pale green, fire-breathing dragon of a jalapeño sauce that was introduced by Veracruz-native Bertha Gonzales to local restaurant Tacodeli 13 years ago. She won an employee salsa contest with it, and it is as important to Austin’s culinary history as Matt’s Bob Armstrong dip, Dirty Martin’s burgers and Franklin’s brisket.

There are varied versions of it in squeeze bottles at taquerias all over town, but Tacodeli made it a locally, fervidly-famous comestible.

The food blogger and bulletin board arguments over ingredients are legend, because the original recipe is closely-guarded. Are the peppers roasted or boiled? Some say there’s avocado, or crema, or raw egg, mayonnaise or even mustard in the sauce. Others swear there’s only a touch of oil, and mostly water so the sauce doesn’t gelatinize in the fridge. Everyone’s got an opinion and a recipe.
 
I was a little baffled though, at why I’d never seen a rojo version of it using red jalapeños. Doña sauce is always green.

New Mexico-style green chile stew.

Green chile stew with pork and potatoes. © Ryan Schierling

I am not from New Mexico, and I am not from Texas. I am originally from Kansas, but I understand the reverence held for their respective chile and chili. 

There is no question as to the permanence of Texas red chili being the Lone Star State's one and only. It was declared to be the state dish of Texas in 1977 by House Concurrent Resolution No. 18, with President Lyndon Johnson brazenly declaring that "chili concocted outside of Texas is a weak, apologetic imitation of the real thing."

I wouldn't go so far as to call chili in New Mexico weak or apologetic, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it chili, either. It's chile stew.

Technically, there is no state dish of New Mexico. They do have an official state question which is directly related, and that is "Red or green?" If you can't decide, you just say "Christmas," and whatever plate you've ordered will get smothered in a little bit of both red and green chile sauce. 

The green version of this stew is my favorite, and it's fairly easy to make. My recipe is not "authentic," as I use poblano and jalapeño peppers in addition to the Hatch green chiles, but like I said, I'm not from New Mexico. This is my Old Mexico recipe for New Mexico green chile stew – by way of Washington state, Virginia, Colorado and Kansas – which is a little closer to a caldillo. 

It is as far away from the Midwestern red chili of my youth as can be, which was a thickly-tomato sauce-based, ground beef and kidney bean-filled bowl, heavily-spiced with ground chili powder and cumin. This green chile stew is thinner, tangier and focuses the flavors of the roasted chiles themselves. The tender pork adds a hearty sweetness and complimentary texture to the stew. It is a fantastic winter meal.

FGHD editor's aside/note/distraction: I spent my formative years in Kansas, and just so you know, there's no official state dish of Kansas either, but The Kansas Historical Society has a recipe for Mr. White's Famous Tossed Lettuce Salad, which legendary, storied newspaperman William Allen White – who was born and died in my hometown of Emporia – apparently prepared at the table "in a rite he stood up to perform." Now, no matter how much pomp and circumstance you're bringing, the tossing of a head of lettuce, a bowl of minced onion, vinegar, oil, salt and curry powder seems a bit unlikely for a state dish contender. State Dish of Kansas – Tossed Salad? No. I will defer to Joe from Oklahoma, and his pork ribs and fries on the Kansas state line side of Kansas City. Now, that's a state dish.