El Paso Cafe

The place: Located on Kirkwood Highway in Elsmere, across from the BJs (formerly Value City). If you search El Paso Cafe on Google Street View, you’ll find the building marked “Manos Latina Restaurant” with a sign in front reading “Open: Peruvian Cuisine.” Rest assured, this is no longer a Peruvian restaurant. It is, in fact, a den of tacos.

Season pork, chicken, al pastor, & chorizo.

That said, we shouldn’t feel all too assured about the El Paso Cafe. Certain locations are cursed, and I don’t think I’ve seen a single Mexican restaurant survive on that particular strip of Kirkwood Highway for more than 8 or 9 months. Despite its high Hispanic population, the town of Elsmere tends to be more than a little unwelcoming to these businesses. One in particular was shut down by the city for violating an historic building ordinance and painting their outer walls white, green, and red (the building has since been painted a drab, eggy yellow). Show me one building, Elsmere, in your town, that has any historic significance whatsoever and is worth maintaining in its present state.

... no? Then shut up about the Mexicans. Your drab little snippet of Kirkwood could use some color.

El Paso Cafe. Is it open? Not sure. Looks dark inside, but the neon signs in the windows are lit and the hours posted suggest it should be good to go. Inside, a woman, sitting across the table from whom I assume is her husband, jumps up and genially apologizes, “Sorry, I like the dark!” It takes a certain kind of bubbly person to make that statement, in this context, sound totally not terrifying. Nancy is that kind of bubbly person.

Red, green, brown.

El Paso Cafe is a sit-down restaurant, with more than enough space for a bustling clientele. Menu items and specials are listed in cheery colors on chalkboards hung on every wall. Nancy brings us some slick orange and green menus, a basket of tortilla chips, and three kinds of salsa: red, green, brown. 

The tacos: The El Paso Cafe serves two types of tacos: Antojitos Mexicanos and Tex-Mex Tacos. The former are $2.00 and served on corn tortillas with cilantro and onion, while the latter, at $2.25, have the option of hard or soft shells and come with lettuce, tomato, sour cream, and cheese. My eyes were bigger than my stomach and I ordered four antojitos mexicanos: chorizo, adobada (marinated pork), chicken, and al pastor.

She asked if we wanted single or double tortillas. Double, of course! But on these tacos, the second tortilla felt like an afterthought. None of the meats was so juicy or overflowing that the extra layer was necessary. The two layers flopped against each other stupidly and didn't want to become a cohesive whole. There was some overall oddness in the tacos’ proportions, too. The tortillas, their separateness emphasizing their girth, seemed to be filled with less than the ideal amount of tasty meat. Except, maybe it was exactly the right amount of tasty meat. It was hard to tell because the tortillas were so unwieldy! On top of the meat was a conservative sprinkling of cilantro and onion.

I started with the chorizo, which, to my surprise and delight, was not crumbled sausage as is typical in antojitos mexicanos, but hefty slices instead. The flavor was fantastic, and the casing gave it a great texture. I paired it with the green salsa, which is very mild and subtle in flavor, and chunky. The red salsa, with the consistency of Old El Paso, is also mild and has a smoky chipotle flavor. The brown salsa was something new: made from dried rather than fresh chilis, it starts off very bitter, almost burned, and its heat builds up slowly to a rather intense conclusion. It’s unusual and worth a try, but I didn’t end up using it on anything other than tortilla chips since I tend to be a wuss about bitter flavors.

Midway through the meal, we were brought another little dish of a white sauce. We dipped tentatively with tortilla chips and found a burst of garlicky goodness. Apparently this is a sour-cream based sauce called chimichurri, filled with garlic and other spices, which in some regions of Mexico is served with pizza. “Once you have pizza with this sauce,” Nancy insisted, “pizza will never be the same without it.” Having no pizza on which to try it, I instead poured some on my adobada. It’s an amazingly flavorful sauce, so much so that it overwhelmed the flavor of the seasoned pork. I suspect it would better complement steak or fish tacos. Or pizza ...?

The elusive chimichurri sauce.

El Paso Cafe’s al pastor is cooked with pineapple and is super tasty. Not much else to say about that. If you like al pastor, they do it right.

I didn’t get a chance to try my chicken taco. I ate too many chips. I had it packed up but left it in a friend’s fridge and it got et. By all accounts, it was “pretty good.”

I can’t wait to pick up a tub of chimichurri from El Paso Cafe the next time I order pizza. This is the main excitement I have about returning. Big sausagey slices of chorizo are a close second.

2304 Kirkwood Highway

10 a.m. - 9 p.m., open 7 days

Cash, major credit cards

Full menu including desserts, roomy seating

asada - steak

chorizo - mexican sausage

al pastor - roasted pork with pineapple

carnitas - pork

lengua - beef tongue

pollo asado - grilled chicken

adobada - marinated pork

carne molida - ground beef

arachera - steak with sauted (sic) onions & jalapenos ($2.50)

campechanos - chorizo & steak mixed ($2.50)

Edit: Just stumbled across El Paso Cafe's Facebook page here, complete with blurry photos of delicious things and frequently posted specials.