Wrestling with Gourmet Tex-Mex

Our favorite plates included "Betsy's tamales," three big thick homemade tamales with lots of meat in the filling, topped with chili con carne, cheese and raw onion with rice and beans on the side. I also liked the carne asada a la Tampiqueña, which features fajita meat tossed with roasted peppers, onions and mushrooms served on a plate with an enchilada, some guacamole, rice and your choice of charro beans or refrieds.

All of my dining companions preferred the charro beans over the refritos at Cyclone Anaya's, but although I like the soupy beans just fine, I am madly, passionately in love with the stupendously creamy refrieds. "Don't you think they went a little overboard on the lard?" a friend of mine said when he tried a bite of mine.

"Overboard? Lard?" I pretended not to understand. Let me eat my creamy frijoles in peace, please. He was eating a roasted chicken chile relleno, which is made with an unbattered roasted poblano. Sure, it sounds like a prudent, low-cholesterol dinner, but in fact it comes swathed in a thick blanket of melted cheese. Lard is better for you than butter or cheese, I might have begun my nutrition lecture, but I held my fat-coated tongue. (So to speak.)

The cheese enchiladas at Cyclone Anaya's aren't very good. The chili gravy is bland and flavorless. Chuy Jr. serves much better cheese enchiladas over at Terlingua. And although the red salsa at Cyclone's is excellent, Terlingua has a more interesting assortment of salsas as well.

Both of the Anaya brothers make the mistake of trying to get beyond the good old-fashioned Tex-Mex that made their family famous, both in the upscale decor and ambitious menus of their respective restaurants. At Terlingua, the steaks, shrimp and Cajun dishes are the worst things on the menu, while the cheese enchiladas and the hamburgers are very good. At Cyclone Anaya's, the dishes to avoid are things you might have encountered in Southwestern cuisine restaurants, like lobster enchiladas.

The old Southwestern standby is served here with gummy, tasteless lobster meat rolled in flour tortillas, then topped with an indifferent white sauce and gloppy cheese. If the lobster enchiladas are short on flavor, the camarones a la parrilla err in the opposite extreme. Jumbo shrimp are stuffed with jalapeños and Mexican cheese and then wrapped in bacon and grilled.

"You can't taste the shrimp," the guy who ordered them complained as he passed one to me. I had to agree.

The costillas, a rack of baby back ribs coated with a sweet barbecue sauce, looked seductively tender. In fact, they were disgustingly mushy. They tasted like they'd been steamed for hours -- or days.

All of the upscale stuff was ordered at one dinner that I shared with five friends. Disgruntled, four of us sat there afterward looking at the remains of our lobster enchiladas, cheesy shrimp with bacon and squishy ribs. The lucky pair who ordered the carne asada and a combination plate didn't share our pain.

What were we thinking? Why did we go to a Tex-Mex restaurant and order all this over-the-top stuff to begin with? Why didn't we stick with chili-topped tamales, guacamole and the combination plates Cyclone Anaya's does best?

I suppose we were seduced into thinking that the perfectly executed decor, the potent frozen margaritas and the nostalgic focus inspired by the portraits of the professional wrestler meant we couldn't go wrong no matter what we ordered.

Cyclone Anaya's is a wonderful place to visit, but when you go, don't make the same mistake. As my old buddy New Orleans food writer Pableaux Johnson always says, "Never order steak at the pancake house." And as I will henceforward always say, "When you're in a Tex-Mex restaurant, stick with the Tex-Mex."