When chef Naomi Gallego decided to open Mijita’s Tex-Mex, most of her research involved thinking about what she loved eating as a child growing up in San Antonio, Texas. That meant puffy tacos, Frito pies, and fajitas would be menu essentials at her stall inside restaurateur Aaron Gordon’s Social Beast food hall on Wisconsin Avenue NW in Glover Park, which offers indoor and patio seating, as well as delivery and takeout.
What she didn’t do was worry about was peoples’ concerns over the authenticity of Tex-Mex food.
“People like to say, ‘It’s not real Mexican,’” she says. “Of course it’s not real Mexican food. It’s not claiming to be. It’s Americanized Mexican.”
Instead, Tex-Mex should be considered a separate cuisine with its own distinct traditions. Take queso, which Gallego makes with mixture of Velveeta and canned Rotel tomatoes. There’s no spicing. “We went to L.A. to do some taco crawling, and they put chili powder in their queso. In Texas, that’s blasphemy.”
There are a pair of tacos – shrimp and fajita. Breakfast tacos are available for brunch on the weekends, because Gallego considers them part of the classic San Antonio morning routine. “When you go to a breakfast meeting, you don’t bring doughnuts, you bring tacos,” she says.
Tortillas are made in house, and they’re fattened with lard. “I know that will turn some people off,” Gallego admits, “but that’s super traditional and the Tex-Mex standard.”
Puffy tacos are a San Antonio specialty. Tortillas are made with a mixture of corn masa and flour laced with water and baking powder, which help the dough bubble up when dunked in the deep fryer. The resulting shells crunch when you bite into them but give way to a more tender interior. Stuffed with either pulled chicken or picadillo, a well-seasoned ground beef mixture, they’re garnished with shredded jack cheese, sour cream, pico de gallo, and lettuce.
Customizable enchiladas pack a pair of corn tortillas with vegetables, chicken, or picadillo, then douse them with classic red or green sauce, or spicy pepper cream sauce. The plate is filled out with beans (black or refried), rice, sour cream, pico de gallo, and shredded lettuce.
Smaller dishes include a Frito pie – served in a sliced open bag, as tradition dictates – which tops the curly corn chips with picadillo, jack cheese, sour cream, and pico de gallo. Mexican street corn is served by the half cob, speared on a stick, and dusted with powdered Hot Cheetos, if you like. For the summer, there’s watermelon salad punctuated with jicama and pickled onions, then tossed in a charred jalapeño vinaigrette sweetened with agave syrup.
To drink, there are sodas, prickly pear limeade, and P.O.G., a tropical triumvirate popular in Hawaii made with passion fruit, orange, and guava juices. Any of the beverages can be served in a miniature vitrolero, the grenade shape plastic containers traditionally used to hold agua frescas in Mexico.
Mijita’s Tex-Mex is the second savory chef position Gallego has held in the last few years, after being the opening chef at Cleveland Park’s Little Beast, which Gordon also owns. Before that, Gallego was a well-regarded pastry chef at some of the city’s top restaurants, including Blue Duck Tavern and Le Diplomate. But she hasn’t given up on her pastry roots. “I don’t want to be pigeonholed into doing one thing,” she says. “I really do like it all.”
At Mijita’s, she offers a pair of desserts, remaining hopeful she can add more in the future. Tres leches cake is amped up with coconut milk and topped off with lime-infused pineapple, while a traditional concha pastry is given a rainbow dye job and stuffed with ice cream.
Sweet tooths should keep their eyes peeled. Gallego is reviving her occasional doughnut pop-up series, Department of Donuts. Likely starting in August, look for weekly offerings at Social Beast and Little Beast.
Mijita’s Tex-Mex is located at 2340 Wisconsin Ave. NW. Open Wednesday and Thursday from 3:30 p.m. – 10 p.m., Friday from 11:30 a.m. – 11 p.m., Saturday from 10:30 a.m. – 11 p.m., and Sunday from 10:30 a.m. – 10 p.m.
