Alamo City Bummer...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

SAN ANTONIO, Texas - Just past dried-out Leon Creek on far South Grissom Road here sits a Mexican joint by the neat name of Elizabeth's, there next to a utilitarian dry cleaners and in the same economical strip mall as a Mexican bakery. You'd think they'd be good at all this in the Alamo City.

But Elizabeth's Mexican Food is a lousy place.

Breakfast came shortly after 10 Ayem today, and it was not a pretty sight. We should've known, of course, when it appeared that there were "flies or more flies" sections. They came and landed on our table seconds after the chubby waitress handed us the menu. They circled and swooped in between our swattings, but they lay claim to their eatery til the end.

Huevos con chorizo, usually not something requiring a Harvard education to prepare, were awful, accompanying beans looking as if refugees from the Mexican Revolution, dark and foreboding, potatoes said to be fried looked the part of baked apple slices. Margaret had chilaquiles drowned in white cheese. She'd never complain, but I've seen better.

Around us, old biddies angled in and out, spotting and claiming their table like true-blue reglulars who even knew the waitress had a kid somewhere in town. "Anda correteando?" the customer asked the waitress. I navigated my way through two tortillas, which, truth be told, looked like the worst tortillas ever born in Texas. Fat and flat, they did nothing for the palate, looking merely the Disco de Oro part, but failing to appease the Tuesday appetite.

Leon Valley on the city's southwestern side lacks much. It is a collection of sun-faded fast food joints and upstart businesses yet to define the landscape. Bandera Road cuts westward, toward Loop 1604, which is what took us back to I-35 north.

We don't usually damn most eateries, but this one was bad, at least to this reporter.

There are other opinions

"My wife and I have been going to Elizabeth's almost every Saturday for the past 8 years," wrote one online reviewer. "Jesus and Elizabeth Egloff and their two kids run the place. Jesus is a wonderful cook and their tortillas (both flour and corn) are among the best I've ever had. The place was closed down for 5 months recently, because of a fire. Within two weeks, all of their old crowd was back, as well as many new customers. That's how good the food is!"

My response: Some people will never say a bad word about anything.

But you can't see much good in a place if a squadron of flies is the welcoming committee...

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