Alfonso L.

What a find! What a dive! What a bargain! You know the border towns are really full of Mexican joints, so the challenge is to find a properly authentic one, and not a chain type place where the flavors seem bland and watered down. I found El Charrito literally that very morning at my hotel while reading the local Brownsville paper. Like throwing a dart at a map and deciding where to visit, I saw this tiny ad that touted El Charrito's lunch special. For a whopping (kidding) $5.78, you get the lunch entree rice, beans, sweet tea and then you get a free newspaper! Sounded good and I realized I was flying blind. I knew nothing about this place so I figured, what the hell? After my morning meetings were over, I plugged the address in to the GPS and on my way to Central Blvd, amid various street constructions and delays, all I saw were other Mexican places and I came pretty close to giving up and just picking one of those places instead. Am I glad I persevered. You walk in and you see a bustling lunch spot. Seniors are in there, families are there, and the lively servers are bringing steaming plates of food, pouring sweet tea, etc. And you also get this glimpse of what is happening in the back, with the cooks preparing the food and keeping things fresh. I also glimpsed this enormous bucket filled with the biggest tomatillos I had ever seen. Those would figure in my entree. The server came over and gave me the rundown: instead of a long superfluous menu of combination plates like all the other places, El Charrito gives you a choice of 4 or 5 lunch specials. I ordered the chuletas de puerco en salsa verde, which was the most flavorful and meaty pork chop smothered in a rich tomatillo sauce. It was served with wonderful refried beans (lovingly flavored, appropriately, with a touch of lard), and rice. A little plastic basket also arrived with this pizza-size looking homemade flour tortilla, a little salad on the plate. Heaven. Digging in and also just being with the lunch crowd here, you got the sense that this was truly homemade fare, what in Mexico is called "comida corrida" --simple, unpretentious food, but also "casera" because it seemed like I was almost entering someone's house and they were preparing what was on the stove that day for lunch. Wonderful food, and so much more preferable to an El Torito-type corporate Mexican fare. Do you know that even after I finished the meal, they still brought me a tiny dish of cool vanilla pudding with a Mexican galleta on top? I won't quibble about the fact that the pudding tasted a little processed and chemical-like; it was the principle that mattered. I also didn't mind the very low price for quite a lot of food. I will definitely try this place again and see what the specials are when I return!