Tortilla chips and salsa, chili con carne, and fajitas are now typical European bar food. Rare is the English pub that doesn’t serve “nachos.” The influence of Tex-Mex on world cuisine fascinates us here at Texas Eats. So when our correspondent, Julia Walsh, moved to Manchester, England in January 2017, we asked her to chronicle Tex-Mex influences on the local English fare. Here is her latest report:
The interior of Chiquito’s is a decidedly Mexican mixture of festive and relaxed. Beer bottle chandeliers (using only bottles from Dos Equis and Corona, of course!) light up piles of straw sombreros that are strewn everywhere for guests to wear and take selfies in. They’re especially popular with the kids.
My Manchester Chimichanga was served in a suitably English fryer basket of chips (or fries, if you’re from America) with guacamole, salsa, and sour cream on the side. (The name means “thing-a-ma-jing.”) It was filled with Mexican-style rice, beans, “jalapenos cheese sauce” (a distant relative of queso) and melted mozzarella, with a choice of meat (chicken, chili beef, or BBQ pulled pork) or habanero mushrooms. I decided to try the habanero mushrooms and was delighted by the decent kick of heat I got from them. Besides the infamous curries, I thought that this was the land of the bland!
Always delighted to be proven wrong.
Note from Robb: Though it was actually invented in Tucson, Arizona; the chimichanga, which is essentially a deep-fried burrito, is lumped into the Tex-Mex category by many Americans and most Europeans. The Manchester version pictured here is certainly Texas Size!