Mexican favorites

Sometimes all you want is just a decent Mexican restaurant. Nothing high end. Nothing fancy. Not a lot of money. Just so the food is ample and tastes good, the meat isn’t tough, and there’s a bottle of salsa picante on the table so you can fire up the food to your liking.

El Charro in the Farmers Lane Plaza in Santa Rosa is just such a place.

El Charro is Spanish for “The Cowboy,” and any cowboy worth his hardtack would like this food, served cantina style by señoritas who know that a smile and a pleasant word can make ordinary food seem special.

Is the food at El Charro ordinary? Sure, if by ordinary you mean all the Mexican favorites nicely made. It doesn’t rise to the level of haute cuisine or even really good home cooking, but it’s just the place to bring the buckaroos, mom and pop and the rest of the family for a repast that won’t break the bank.

Like any proper cowpoke, you can sidle up to the seven-seat bar and order one of 17 tequilas by the shot, none of which cost more than $7. The kids can have one of the Jarritos or Mexican Cokes. There are home-made agua frescas, including horchata, hibiscus, and tamarindo. All sorts of mixed drinks are available as singles or, if you bring your posse, a pitcher of house margaritas goes for $24. The usual domestic and Mexican beers are available.

In the old days, cowboys would drink straight rye before brawling in the bar and throwing a chair through the back bar mirror, but thank goodness those days are over. You get a whiff of them, though, from the murals on the walls. One shows cowboys testing their machismo by waving a red flag at a bull in the town square. Another shows women at work making tortillas while children pick fruit from the trees. The walls are decorated with Mexican display sombreros — those heavy black jobs with the silver filigree that working cowboys wouldn’t think of wearing. And there’s a little shrine to the Virgin Mary, so any rowdy owlhoots better cool it.

You couldn’t do better than to start with the Mexican Shrimp Cocktail ($13.95 ***) featuring a goblet of fresh-tasting, well-cooked butterflied shrimp swimming in a lime juice, avocado and tomato salsa — with saltines in their cellophane wrappers on the side. This had the tang of citrus, the smooth unctuousness of avocado, the succulence of vine-ripe tomatoes, and clean-tasting shrimp — everything you want in a shrimp cocktail Mexican style.

It’s fun to order off the a la carte menu, because then you get a chance to sample more of what the chuckwagon has to offer. A Fish Taco ($2.75 **) can be ordered on soft or crispy tortillas. Two soft corn tortillas are given a large spoonful of small diced fish fried to a crispy brown and splashed with lime juice. It’s just a morsel, yes, but a tasty one.

If you’re hungry, follow up with a Tostada ($6.95 **½). A tortilla is baked crisp and loaded with the meat of your choice — I chose chicken — plus refried beans, shredded lettuce, fiery-spicy pico de gallo, cheese, sour cream and guacamole. It’s piled high and plenty of food for the price.

A Beef Enchilada ($2.50 **) can be ordered with chicken or carnitas (little pieces of caramelized pork) as well, and is a good helping of flavorful griddled meat, onions and garlic wrapped in a tortilla, ladled over with red chili sauce and topped with cheese that melts winningly over and down the sides of the enchilada as it’s being cooked. If you really have a hankering for enchiladas, order the combination plate for $10.95. In addition to two enchiladas of your choice, the plate will contain rice, whole or refried beans, lettuce, pico de gallo, cheese, sour cream and guacamole.

It’s the same with most of the other center-stage items like chile relleno, tamale, steak or chicken fajitas, and the other typical Mexican specialties. All can be ordered as a combination plate. But then you can scale up: a Combo Grande for $14.95 contains a variety of items like two enchiladas and carne asada (grilled steak) along with the combo sides, plus all the other combinations and permutations of Mexican dishes. Or you can turn the dial all the way up and go all-out for the El Grande Combo that combines chicken and steak fajitas with prawns on the plate with rice, beans, lettuce, sour cream, guacamole and pico de gallo. It sets you back $18.95, but it’s a heck of a lot of food.

Or you can keep sampling a la carte. One Tamale ($3.50 **) consists of steamy masa harina (dried corn dough ground into flour) stuffed with pork. The corn flour is made into a wet dough, stuffed and usually wrapped in corn leaves before baking, which steams the tamale, although there were no leaves with this one. Masa is made by soaking field corn in lime water, which not only loosens the husks, but frees niacin (vitamin B3) from its unavailable state and makes it assimilable by the human digestive system. In the southern United States in the early 20th century and Europe in the 18th century, people who subsisted on corn that wasn’t soaked in lime water often developed pellagra, a nasty niacin deficiency disease. But not in Mexico. We can only speculate how pre-Colombian Native Americans discovered this life-saving technique.

Chile Relleno ($3.50 **½) is a delicious way to eat poblano chilies. The roasted pepper is peeled, stuffed with jack or queso and its wet surface is floured with masa. Then it’s dipped in a batter made of whipped egg whites with yolks folded in, and fried in oil. The result is high on most people’s list of favorite Mexican foods.

The stars of the a la carte menu are Three Empanadas ($7.95 ***), chosen with beef filling and served with lettuce, guacamole, sour cream and pico de gallo. Like all Mexican empanadas, they are large, the bready crust is softly textured, and the filling has plenty of ground beef and spices.

A Regular Burrito ($6.95 *½) was ordered with carne asada as the choice of meat. The burrito’s flaw was the woefully overcooked chopped steak, joined in the little burro’s interior by rice, beans and cheese.

Dinner ended with a good Flan ($2.50 **½), a workmanlike custard that quickly shimmied down the throat.

To sum up: Here’s good, everyday Mexican food the way you like it: inexpensive and generously proportioned.

Jeff Cox writes a weekly restaurant review column for the Sonoma Living section. You can reach him at jeffcox@sonic.net.