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. 

TGICFS.

CFS. OMG. HTS. STFU. SMDH.  © Ryan Schierling

Editor's note: As of February 2019, Hit The Spot Cafe has closed. One of the best, last, proper breakfast CFS and eggs plates is gone. 

"...so that's how I woke up with shin splints and found out I'd been banned from the community pool..."

"...I don't know what happened. I opened the front door and the light was blinding. It felt like I'd been in the house for two days instead of two hours and now the upper atmosphere was burning. It was incapacitating overexposure, hot white light that turned the insides of my cleaved eyelids bright blood red, even through the futile shade of my outstretched hand..."

"...I'd fight you right now, 'cept I don't wanna crush my cig'rettes..."

I'm not sure what to relay here. It's been a while. I really don't even want to tell you where this place is. Really. I guess if you run in the right, tight AUSTIN TEXAS CFS circles, you'll figure it out.

Your Haiku:

A breakfast stunner
Location curated, so
locals only please

SaveSave

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. 

TGICFS.

Chicken-fried steak and eggs at Cypress Grill. © Ryan Schierling

I'm still lamenting the closure of Arkie's Grill, because dollars to dunkers, that was the best chicken-fried steak and eggs in Austin. I've kind of given up on the breakfast CFS here, since no one really does it. Chicken-fried steak is always on proper Southern lunch and dinner menus, with fries or mashed potatoes and 40 other side dish options.

I want it in the A.M., damnit, with fried eggs, crispy hash browns, Texas toast, some badass cream gravy and a stiff cup of black coffee. That's it. This breakfast is Texas birthright.

Cypress Grill does it absolutely right. A pounded-out, tender cube steak, properly hand-battered and fried, topped with andouille sausage gravy, with a pair of perfectly-cooked eggs and a little wedge of buttered toast to sop up leftover gravy and egg yolk. If they had hash browns instead of home fries, we could have had a brunch love affair, and I would have ordered plate after plate until they kicked me out.

Bonus points for their infused Bloody Mary, which is the second best I've had in the city, just behind Cafe Malta's Bloody Hell.

Now, here's your obligatory TGICFS haiku:

A New Orleans brunch
Adept, tender kitchen hands
Soothe my quondam wounds.

The horseshoe sandwich.

Springfield, Illinois meets Austin, Texas. Horseshoe sandwich, FGHD style. © Ryan Schierling

I'm sure there are wealthy suburbs of Springfield, Illinois that have more cardiologists per capita than any other city in the United States. I imagine when filling out new patient paperwork, there is a check-box for "Do you eat horseshoe sandwiches? If yes, how many per year?" That information is disclosed to insurance companies, you are deemed "high-risk" and your policy is put under review.

In the summer of 2007, I ate a horseshoe at storied purveyor D'arcy's Pint in Springfield. I was determined to finish it, and after 45 minutes, I did. Moments later, I felt the first tinges of angina. I was told by locals that to thin the blood I needed more alcohol. I ordered a pitcher of Old Style and a cold, wet bar towel for my forehead, and that seemed to do the trick.

Years later, I kept telling Julie I was going to recreate this Illinois staple, and it was going to be glorious. The Texas toast, the hamburger patties, the crinkle-cut fries and that incredible blanket of luxurious, velvety cheese sauce.

She took my braggadocio with a lot of grains of salt, reminding me that the heart never forgets. And yet, I got a crinkle-cutter in my stocking the following Christmas. This week, I finally tied on my apron and took that Springfield regular to Austin-level serious. Honestly, why hasn't Texas adopted this plate? It's right up there with Frito chili pie, chicken-fried steak and eggs with hash browns, and enchiladas Dan Jenkins. 

A simple, tiny taco tome.

(L) Our beautiful flea-market machacadora. (R) Pinto beans. © Ryan Schierling

This is a story about a humble taco. It’s a bit of a love story, where homemade corn tortillas are concerned, and where my love for anything made of masa harina was born. These tacos reach back deep into the earliest grasp of my childhood food memories.



My mom grew up in southern California, but as it would happen, the craft of making homemade tortillas was learned as a young working mother in the Pacific Northwest from our neighborhood bread baker and all-around food-geek, Mrs. Cooper (who, impressively, milled her own flour at home!) Using masa harina, water and a sturdy cast-iron tortilla press, we made these delectable little homemade tortillas on a pretty regular basis when I was a kid. It was great fun to roll the masa dough into little balls and then smash it between the waxed paper or plastic on the press. Then there was the trick of peeling it off the plastic (usually a deconstructed large zip-bag) without it breaking into pieces in my young hands, and onto the cast-iron griddle they went. 
It was a team effort and family activity all its own, with a delicious payoff.

The toppings were always just this simple – refried beans, shredded cheddar cheese, iceberg lettuce and (if you felt like it) a little bit of old-school grocery-store taco sauce. Simple and honest. For me, the flavor of beans and cheese on fresh corn tortillas is about as comfort food as it gets. The lettuce adds a cool contrast and a bit of crunch.



There’s plenty of fancy to go around these days. Always a new take to be found on an old recipe or the temptation to take two perfectly good food items and wrangle them into a mind-bending knot and call it "fusion cuisine." But every time I feel like I might be over-complicating my food experience, I think of these tacos. They don’t need “more” to be better. In fact, what makes them so delightful are the plain and clear flavors. A little crema or drizzle of a favorite sauce would be delicious, too, but these tacos truly do not require any of those things to be wonderful.
 In a world of "bolder, spicier, more complex!" these are gentle, simple and straight-forward.

Shrimp, grits, gravy and greens.

Fried grit cakes with boudin gravy, dandelion greens and shrimp. © Ryan Schierling

Every Southern cook worth their heritage cast iron pot-and-pan collection has a shrimp and grits recipe that's the best. Of course, it's a recipe that was bestowed to them in hushed tones by their mama, from their mama's mama, and so on and so forth, down a long line of mamas. My mother doesn't have a shrimp and grits recipe and I'm not a southern cook. I rock the cast iron, but there is no lineage that would tie me to a historically time-honored shrimp and grits recipe.

I'm not looking to give you one more traditional (or non-traditional) reinterpretation of what started as a Low Country breakfast dish. It's been done.

While I have a deep and abiding respect for the classics, I wanted a fussy, sassy, gussied-up little Southern belle that was more a complete plate than just shrimp and grits. Call me a Yankee all you want – but when you taste these fried grit cakes and boudin cream gravy, the little pickled green tomatoes, the robust, biting dandelion greens and that rich New Orleans-style barbecue shrimp – you will slap your mama.

Ice, de-ice, baby.

(L) Arapahoe Basin, Colorado. (R) Denver International Airport. © Ryan Schierling

We haven’t been on a proper vacation in eight years, which is longer than this Foie Gras Hot Dog thing has existed and longer than we’ve been in Austin. The last time we hopped on a plane for some adventuring was 2006 when we took a week away in Hawaii – sunning, snorkeling, and sampling plate lunch and proper poke every chance we got. It’s been far too long since we travelled for play, with a side of relaxing, dining and drinking.

Back in November, we thought it might be nice to see some snow and planned ahead for a Colorado trip. I’ve got history there, and though it’s been nearly 20 years since I’ve set foot on and strapped in at Arapahoe Basin, mountain topography does not change. They’ve added a lift on the back bowl that I used to hike, there are a few new beers on tap and lift ticket prices are about $70 (!!!) more than what I remember, but The Legend is, and will always be, my absolute favorite place to ride. 

I spent the better part of the early 1990s faithfully snowboarding A-Basin two or three times a week. What is now called the “Early Riser Lot” was church at 7 a.m. Bad Religion at volume, changing into snow gear and finishing off a travel mug of black coffee before nodding at ski patrol and catching first chair behind them. From mid-mountain, it was just a hard left down to the Lenawee lift and 13,000 feet was minutes away. From there, it was a cruise to the right and a drop off Cornice Run, or left and as far as you could get traversing the East Wall before turning in and churning through powder in Land of the Giants. I rode a Burton Craig Kelly Extreme and that board, on that prominence, made a mountain man of me. Twenty years is too long to have been away.

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.

Smoked salmon chowder with salmon bacon.

Smoked salmon chowder with salmon bacon. © Ryan Schierling

There are so many brilliant smoked meats in Texas it's a shame that no one really pays much attention to the fishes.


Granted, this is bovine country and the nearest salmon, be it Pacific or (heaven forbid) Atlantic, is an ocean away. Wherever you hail from, there’s always something sacred about cooking with smoke. Brisket is the gold standard by which barbecue joints are judged in the Great Republic, and if you've got a line out the door for beef, then pork ribs and chicken are pretty much a gimme.


Geographically, barbecue in this part of the country has never had a reason to be about the fish. Southern barbecue is beef and pig and yard bird. About the only ocean-sourced thing you’re likely to see on the grates of a Texas smoker are gulf oysters.
 

Salmon has a little less real estate to work with than most things that end up in the smoke. If someone could engineer and farm a salmon the size of a cow, you'd have cheap sides of salmon cluttering up everyone's offset, and apple trees would be shaking in their boots, err... at their roots. But salmon are not the size of cows and they're a little harder to catch than cows, pigs and chickens, so their most delicious parts are at a premium. 

Beer, billiards and bisque.

Tomato mushroom bisque with bread and butter. © Ryan Schierling

I moved from Emporia, Kansas to Fort Collins, Colorado in 1991. I was 19, and the little college town was blowing up with micro-breweries crafting incredible beer. If my parents are reading this, I certainly did not partake of alcoholic beverages until the day I turned 21. If you're anyone but my parents reading this, spending the previous year on a University of Kansas dormitory floor of brilliant art majors made creating fake IDs far too simple. Mine was used regularly until the day it was taken away by an overzealous doorman at a Fort Collins bar that shall not be named, and has since shuttered. No hard feelings.

New Belgium Brewing Company had just opened up shop with a dubbel named Abbey and a great little amber called Fat Tire. They only came in 22-ounce bomber bottles, and were unlike anything I'd ever had. O'Dell's Easy Street Wheat and 90 Shilling (still one of my favorite beers of all time) were of the same era, Left Hand Brewing started up in Longmont with their Sawtooth Ale, and soon it seemed you couldn't walk around the block without a new brewpub or home-brew store opening up.

CooperSmith's Pub & Brewing was in Old Town Fort Collins, and a short walk from my first apartment. A few years later, it was a short drive down College Avenue from my second apartment. 

Give thanks for the unlikeliest of seven-layer dips.

Seven layers of Thanksgiving classics, served on toast points. © Ryan Schierling

It's the last day of November and your Thanksgiving leftovers, if there are any left over, are languishing. 

Every turkey-day legacy recipe has already been searched for and modified. There's nothing new or interesting under the waning Fall sun, and you're about to dig the remains out of the fridge and drop them into a pet dish. It's the feast he/she/it has been waiting for all along – so many hours of preparation and work, the vestiges dumped into your dog's bowl on the floor and devoured in large, breathless, indiscriminate gulps in a matter of seconds. 

Though sometimes disturbed, I am not weak and/or unimaginative in the kitchen (see this, this or this.) Chez nous, these pets, our cats, are absolutely not getting my leftovers, my legacy. Cranberries and dressing probably aren't even good for them.

If you're lucky, you should have at least a wee bit of six of these seven layers already. There is dressing, mashed potatoes, turkey gravy, sweet potatoes in some form or fashion (this year we had sweet potato gratin in poblano cream), green bean casserole and cranberry sauce. The odd man out is turkey liver pate, which both utilizes some of the giblets and provides the backbone for this spread. 

All about a cheesy broccoli noodle casserole.

Broccoli noodle casserole with cheddar and Boca chicken. © Ryan Schierling

It's Fall and, naturally, the topic around the proverbial water cooler turns to casseroles. Doesn't it...?

Well, around our house it did. Ryan was busy innovating his riff on a Texas standard, when he looked up from his King Ranch in progress and asked... "So, when are you going to make your broccoli noodle casserole?" Um, you mean the one where I channel my inner 1950s housewife...?

<flashback>

One day, back in the aughts, I have a moment where I decide to get all retro and make a casserole. I mean... how hard can it be? Open a can of Campbell's and I'm half way there. I don't have a particular strategy in mind, just an inclination and the mandatory tin of Cream of Something soup – assemble, bake at 350-degrees, now you're cookin'. 

It's a big casserole, so I share it with my neighbors. It gets raves, which throws me for a bit of a loop – it's very tasty, but come on... no one's supposed to get kudos for an old-fashioned casserole like this, right? Perhaps it's the richness of the sauce or the texture and tooth of the broccoli, though I suspect a bit of noodle casserole nostalgia is at play. Whatever the case, it is certainly classic comfort food and well worth the time it took to make. Recipe carefully documented for future reference.

</flashback>

I have since made this dish again and again – with nary a variation. My inner 1950s housewife can follow a recipe, and has no shame.

King Ranch Salmon.

King Ranch Smoked Salmon Casserole. © Ryan Schierling

I've been threatening to do this casserole recipe for a while now, and I'm kind of surprised there's nothing like it out there on the whole wide world of internets. Searches for King Ranch Salmon turned up lots of hits for "King Salmon," "Used F-150 King Ranch edition in Salmon, Idaho," and "Carole King's ranch on the Salmon River for sale." The internet – insultingly enough – even asked me "Did you mean King Ranch Chicken?"

King Ranch Chicken is the only casserole that matters in Texas and there are rules. There may be as many subtle individual adaptations and family variations as there are Junior League cookbooks, but most will concur this is a dish best kept simple – with shredded chicken, cans of cream of this-or-that soups and Ro*Tel®, corn tortillas and a ton of cheese. 

This, however, is not King Ranch Chicken.

There is no condensed soup, no Cheese Whiz, no crushed-up nacho-flavored tortilla chips or tins of tomato and green chile. There is no chicken. This is the king of Texas casseroles meets the king of all cold-water fish. It is SXNW. It is smoky, creamy, rich, and as satisfying as comfort food gets. Great Republic purists will inevitably call this just another sensationalist bastardization of a classic Texas dish, but they can go put a sockeye in it. 

This is my King Ranch Salmon.

The secrets we keep – chilaquiles at El Torito.

Chilaquiles at El Torito. © Ryan Schierling

Editor's note: Sadly, El Torito has closed. 

When we first visited Anna Salinas' El Torito seven months ago, there was no information across the wood shake above the front windows, only a blank open signage slot with exposed fluorescent tubes, waiting to illuminate something, anything.

There was no banner with the tiny restaurant's name, or specials, or letting the public know that the flour and corn tortillas were hand-made. There were only large, hand-written signs in the windows that read "TACOS," "GORDITAS" and "MENUDO."

There is a larger taqueria in this same strip mall, just down the way, and an even bigger Mexican restaurant/cantina across the street where the parking lot always seems to be full. Truth be told, we're not ones for sizzling fajita specials, frozen margaritas and roving mariachi bands, and we've never been the least bit curious about either of those joints. After our first breakfast at El Torito, we were absolutely, unequivocally hooked.

Enchiladas Dan Jenkins.

Eat these with an over-easy egg and say your prayers. © Ryan Schierling

When I was a kid, the whole seatbelt thing was something folks were just warming up to. I don't know the reason the moment stands out in my memory so, but one day as we piled in to the back of our family station wagon, I was a little slow to put my seatbelt on. My younger brother took it upon himself to harass me about my lack of safety precautions. Finally, in exasperation, he exclaimed, "Do you want to die?!" 

The feeling I had when he said that is kinda the same one I have when I eat these enchiladas. They are stupid to eat, but there's a liberation in the ridiculousness of it all. Between the gooey, salty, Velveeta, the bright tang of onions on the tooth, and that river of enchilada sauce – it seems like the food equivalent of what the free-lovin' 60's must have been like. Drape an over easy egg over the top and you just did it on acid, man....

Our first introduction to this hard-core Tex-Mex standard was at Dart Bowl in Austin. This recipe is from Texas culinary historian-curator-troublemaker Robb Walsh's Texas Eats: The New Lone Star Heritage Cookbook. There are two sauce options in the book – chili con carne sauce or original chili gravy – one with meat and one without. I rather prefer the smoother, meatless style (looking at you vegetarians who care not a hoot about your arteries this week), but there's a fairly narrow margin of difference between the two.

You'll be all set for a stiff drink and a nap when you're done. And, you know, we kinda had to make up for all those light enchilada recipes we've posted this week some way or another... but you'll only get lame apologies for that until you've tried these.

Recipe not included below because it's not our recipe to offer, and we make it exactly as it was written with no adaptations. Go buy a copy of Texas Eats, turn to pages 112-113 and fold the pages back until the book's spine breaks. It will now always open to this dish. It's worth it. 

Well, at least once a year, or until your cardiologist finds out.

Krab enchiladas.

Krab enchiladas – do not attempt without proper supervision. © Ryan Schierling

I have a few favorite, revered dishes from when I was a kid. This one is kind of a geographical anomaly, as growing up in Kansas was as far away from any coastal waters containing crab could possibly be. Billboards advertised "Beef, it's what's for dinner!" (But if you want crustacean, it's probably going to be spelled with a "K.")

And so it was. Krab (aka Sea Legs or Ocean Sticks) – constructed primarily from Alaska pollock, egg white, crab flavoring and red food coloring – was what we got at the grocer in Emporia, Kansas. Mom made these enchiladas with flour tortillas, jack cheese and a white sauce. Think enchiladas suizas, middle-of-the-midwest-style. 

I don't make them exactly the way mom did. I've tried lump crab meat and cod, and both taste a little fancier than they should for this preparation. This is, in a sense, modern day depression-era cooking – trying to make something elaborate out of an amalgam. The cream cheese tempers the whole dish well, adding a perceived richness that the faux crab doesn't provide on its own. Kind of like pulling up to Red Lobster for senior prom in a limo that you really can't afford. 

So I did switch up the filling up a little and bossed-out the garnish, but had to stay true to the shockingly-red Krab sticks, which are a little like sweet, sweet crabby-flavored string cheese. Don't hate me for loving these. 

Down where the Würzburger flows.

Veal goulash with sauerkraut. © Ryan Schierling

I've had a stuffy little red cookbook in my possession for a while now that's been begging to breathe. Compiled by Jan Mitchell and first-published by Doubleday in 1952, Lüchow's German Cookbook – The Story and the Favorite Dishes of America's Most Famous German Restaurant – is important because at the time, there was nothing like it.

And there was certainly nothing like August Lüchow's restaurant, established in 1882, in New York City.

Described by Ludwig Bemelmans – writer and illustrator of the classic and much-loved Madeline series of children's picture books (and an internationally-known gourmet) – Lüchow's attracted a diverse clientele of "...priests, students, national figures, diplomats, politicians with Italian friends in race-track suits with pearl stickpins in their neckties, theatrical folk with broad-shouldered blondes who have brought along Mama and Papa. It is alive with children and dogs." He called it "the most kaleidoscopic restaurant in New York." 

The cookbook is a time machine to the past, to a genteel and gracious establishment that unfortunately no longer exists. Lüchow's shuttered after more than a century of serving proper and traditional European cuisine on East 14th Street at Irving Place.

The very first recipe of the book is Pickled Beef Head Salad, which is followed by Pig's Head Cheese Vinaigrette.

There isn't anything easy about this book, but there is nothing more authentically and satisfyingly German.
 

Hot meat dip.

Hot meat dip - queso with smoked beef brisket. © Ryan Schierling

You've all certainly heard of the Great Velveeta Shortage of 2014 by now. "Increased seasonal demand" and a shifting of production lines from one plant to another led to a shortage of the famous pasteurized prepared cheese product, especially the more moderately-sized eight- and sixteen-ounce loaves. Moderately-sized... how cute. Your Super Bowl party is screwed. 

Thankfully, here in Texas, every grocer worth their inflated sodium content has a year-round endcap with nothing but #10 cans of Ro*Tel and five-pound chubs of Velveeta. No man, woman or child will ever go without queso here because, in The Great Republic of Texas, queso is a birthright. 

Back in the Ghetto Melrose days of Seattle, hot meat dip mysteriously became a party staple. I'm not sure how it all started, but browned ground beef, Velveeta, a tin of tomatoes with green chiles and a secret mix of spices would bubble away in an ancient, volcanic crock pot next to a gigantic bowl of tortilla chips. It was easy, and it was always a hit. 

The rarest chilaquiles in all of Austin.

Chilaquiles at Veracruz All Natural. © Ryan Schierling

Elusive. Exclusive. Exquisite. 

We finally stopped with 50 plates of chilaquiles. This is chilaquiles plate number 51.

Just when I thought Julie and I had closed the book on chilaquiles in Austin, Reyna Vasquez – owner of Veracruz All Natural – dropped a first-class, stunningly-good breakfast beso on us.

We had already tried a few times to get ahold of these rarified chilaquiles. The first Sunday we stopped by, the trailer was closed for repairs. I called the following week to find that the special brunch menu was served only on the first Sunday of each month – essentially making these the most elusive of all chilaquiles in Austin, offered only 12 times a year.

I had a feeling they were going to be pretty good, but I had no idea just how good. At one point, Julie took a perfectly-proportioned bite and simply started laughing. She had no words, only a giddy roll of the eyes and a slight swoon. My reaction was incredulous silence, stunned disbelief, and an immediate clearing of my calendar for all following first Sundays of the month.

Both rojo y verde are offered, plated (yes, actual plates out of a trailer) with your choice of charro, black, or refried black beans, and fried plantains. I ladled out a bit of the spicy green and rich red hot sauces that are so wonderful on the Veracruz All Natural tacos, but the salsas went unused, wholly unnecessary. The chilaquiles verde were as ideal as they get – fresh totopos with perfect tooth under a sauce so natural, bright and right, with just the slightest heat. Under the over-easy eggs were a few slivers of raw white onion and a dusting of hard-grated cheese. The red version was more mild and subtle, a little delicate, but refined and ridicously-satisfying. There were none of the overly-heavy, thickly-spiced, tomato-chile flavors we'd seen on so many plates of chilaquiles rojo before. Refried black beans (flawlessly seasoned) and sweet, crispy-edged, creamy-interior fried plantains finished the plate. 

Texas Coffee Roasters provided the café and the sandia agua fresca was amazing. 

Veracruz All Natural is now at the top of our list of the best chilaquiles in Austin. Thank you, Reyna. We'll see you again soon.