El Rey Mexican Food

By now it's fairly common for famous musicians to have a favorite Austin hot sauce. The late Stevie Ray Vaughan was said to have a taste for the selections at the legendary Seis Salsas and his older brother Jimmie Vaughan makes regular visits to South Austin's Botanitas for Ruben's salsas. The newest salsa to find favor with musicians is El Rey's special brew created by owner Gary Gomez. The last time drummer Jamie Oldaker toured Europe with Eric Clapton, the sideman insisted on packing gallons of the incendiary red condiment to see Ol'Slowhand and the band through the hot sauce-deprived continent.

I didn't know any of this the first time I visited El Rey restaurant, a pleasant family dining spot on the southern edge of Brodie Oaks near Last Call and Toys R Us. All I knew was that the menu boasts several Chihuahuan, Sonoran and New Mexican dishes, the Mexican comfort food of my childhood. The menu offers chimichangas, burritos, enchiladas (both rolled and stacked New Mexican style), chiles rellenos (either poblano or anaheim) and three varieties of fajitas. There are reasonably priced lunch specials every day plus interesting vegetarian and breakfast menus to boot.

It may take me a while to get through the menu, however, because I've quickly developed an affinity for the true specialties of the house. Eric Clapton's band can have the fine hot sauce as long as there is plenty of the toothsome carne guisada ($7.25) and definitive homestyle puerco y chile verde ($7.25) stew left for me. Carne guisada is a dish that is unfortunately too often made with cheap, fatty cuts of gristly meat in a thin, floury gravy. El Rey's carne guisada is artfully made with lean, tender chunks of beef, cooked long and slow with spices and finely ground ancho peppers. With Mexican rice, creamy refritos and hot corn tortillas, there is no better peasant meal on earth.

The Chile Verde, as the El Rey menu describes it, is just the kind of stew or burrito filling that yourgrandmother would make if she had grown up along the border that divides the American West and Northern Mexico. One bite of the perfectly cooked diced pork in the spicy green chile gravy and I was transported to the home of a college friend in New Mexico, her proud abuelita smiling at the stove as we devoured her stew in fresh tortillas.

Both dishes come in a variety of guises, burrito or chimichanga filling, tacos and dinners. I also tried a wonderful sopa de albondigas (meatball soup, $4.75) and pozole (pork and hominy stew, $4.75) which I will keep in mind for cooler weather. The rest of the menu will have to wait.

-- Virginia B. Wood