Before last week's column (featuring Fish and Pasta Café) hit the stands, I got an e-mail reprimanding me for only writing about what the sender called the "higher end" of the food realm. The author of the e-mail is the chef and owner of an inexpensive restaurant in town and of course he wants me to come eat at his place, but that issue aside, the guy had a point. It's easy for us foodies to get caught up in our own shtick, only eating at the same places everyone else is talking and writing about. But "Total Pig" is going to be different, I promise.
This week I went on a mission for cheap eats. With the help of Arts and Culture Editor Zane Fischer (who is quite a foodie himself), I found Lonchería El Herradero, a mobile food cart that is parked seven days a week at a car wash on the corner of Rufina Street and Siler
Road. There is no ambiance here. It's a dusty parking lot along an unattractive, industrial stretch of road. There is no place to sit and no shade. The best part of waiting for our food was watching a cocky teenager back into a light pole, hook his plastic bumper to one of the pole's anchoring bolts, and rip the entire bumper off as he pulled away. Man, the look of fury and embarrassment on his face as he went to retrieve that bumper! It made standing in the sweltering sun seem fun.
But who cares about ambiance when, for about the same price as two Big Mac Extra Value Meals, we filled our bellies to the brim with cheap and tasty tortas made by cart owner Antonio Elias and his mother, Isabel.
The torta is a miracle of a sandwich, much less well known than its compatriot the taco, but in some ways, so much yummier. These things make American sandwiches seem…well…just plain sucky. At the Lonchería, as at many other modest Mexican restaurants, the torta starts with a lightweight bun that has just enough crustiness to make it more substantial than a hamburger bun but less tooth-endangering than a really crunchy artisan bun. The torta
bun is split and brushed with butter or grease and briefly toasted on the flat-top grill. This is an excellent start for any sandwich.
We tried two tortas from the cart, al pastor, and a special of the day, torta a la milanesa. The special's toasted bread was smeared with mayonnaise (Why do people hate mayonnaise? Do not fear the mayo. It's gooooood!), then piled with avocado, lettuce, tomato and pickled jalapeños. In the very middle was something they called steak. Actually, the steak was sliced so thin it was almost the thickness of a Steak-Um. But for $3.50, what do you expect, an inch-thick rib-eye? The thing was delicious.
The torta al pastor contained a massive mound of shaved pork, heavily laden with fruity red chile and finishing with a slight tang of citrusy cilantro. It was a little greasy, but hey, sometimes greasy is good, right? Overall, I thought the meal was a steal for seven bucks. I'll have to go back to try the burritos, tacos, gorditas and breakfast burritos. Next time I'll bring enough cash so that I can wash the meal down with a Mexican Coke in a tall glass bottle.
The tortas looked so good we ate them right there in the parking lot, and we left thoroughly parched. I was thinking margaritas, but we sensibly decided to seek cool refreshment at Ecco Café, a month-old gelateria on Marcy Street. What is gelato? It's the Italian version of ice cream, made with milk and eggs, but not whipped, so the texture is denser and the flavor more intense than ice cream.
Inside Ecco's big freezer case, long, narrow steel pans of gelato and sorbetto are labeled but also adorned with edible indicators of their flavors. Lacy fragments of cold, hand-poured chocolate jut out from the surface of the stracciatelli; instead of using chocolate chips in his vanilla ice cream, owner and gelato maker Matt Durkovich uses ribbons of couverture, a cocoa butter-rich kind of chocolate that hardens without freezing. The chocolate melts in your mouth instead of shattering. Delightful!
Cubes of green apple and sprigs of mint atop the apple-mint gelato convinced us to try this unusual pairing, which turned out to be exceptionally refreshing. Other tempting flavors include strawberry habañero (ooh! Cold! Hot! Cold!), lavender honey, mango and espresso. There are four sizes, ranging from the kids cup (two flavors for $2) up to the large cup (four flavors for $3.50). They are worth every penny.
Ecco also serves a full line of espresso drinks, teas and sodas. A short list of sandwiches come from Four and Twenty Blackbirds. Go for the gelato, stay for lunch.
Lonchería El Herradero
1260 Rufina St. (at Siler Road)
316-5153
Open every day 9 am-7 pm
Ecco Espresso and Gelato
105 E. Marcy St.
986-9778
Open Monday-Thursday 7:15 am-5 pm, Saturday 9 am-9 pm, closed Sunday
E-mail with all of your suggestions, tips, praise and complaints.
