Torta Wars: Melis vs Salsa Fuego.

I am a huge fan of the torta. I've said that before.

In the last week, I have visited both Melis and Salsa Fuego restaurants looking for a good one. I prefer Salsa Fuego.

But I am still searching for the smaller, steak-roll version of the torta sandwich. If you see one please let me know. Until then, the torta war champion is: Salsa Fuego's pork carnitas torta.

Opinions welcome . . .

Antonio's. Is it the Best?

Regular Joe's Guide, a good and detailed, local restaurant-review weblog, recently posted its favorite Mexican restaurants in the area. The number one favorite, of both the author and his wife was Antonio's near the NorthEast Mall. Last Saturday night my wife and I went to try it out.

I agree with RJG that Antonio's is not your average Tex-Mex restaurant, it is a quality and more traditional Mexican fare, freshly prepared. And it is very good. The chips are made fresh and served hot. My entree, camarones wrapped in bacon and topped with an avocado sauce, was perfection. The mixed vegetables served with the shrimp were freshly cooked and slightly crispy, just the way I like them. The avocado sauce for the shrimp was very nicely done. My wife had an enchilada plate and it, too, was very good.

Would I give it the same high praise as RJG?

The salsa for my taste was a little weak. I prefer an almost pico de gallo hot sauce with a little more bite. But salsas are very much a personal thing. Also, I was disappointed that they weren't busier. I think they had four two-top tables filled. I can't blame them for this, and we were eating early for a Saturday night, but the buzz was low.

In order for me to call them "numero uno" I would need two things. First, a location with a better atmosphere on the outside. The restaurant is tastefully decorated in the modern minimalist kind of way, on the inside, but I think the food quality demands a little nicer location for diners. It is a casual but dining atmosphere and the restaurant being crowded into a strip shopping center nearly underneath the 820/121 cloverleaf doesn't draw me back. We like to walk, or window shop, and grab some coffee or ice cream after dinner. Secondly, I think the salsa is weak. It's mild, tomato saucy, and without much vegetable texture.

Maybe I'm being picky. The service is excellent.  It is priced as you would expect. We were at $29.00 for two, no alcohol, without tip. Comparable to Mi Cocino, Cantina Laredo and Pappasito's. Are they good enough to draw us away from downtown Fort Worth dining? I don't think so. I do know that I could eat at Antonios everyday -- if they moved downtown.

My thanks to Regular Joe's Guide for the suggestion.

The Subway Breakfast Sandwich.

This morning, I stopped by Subway for their newly offered breakfast sandwich and coffee. I like a couple of their lunch sandwiches, and I like how Subway moves people through the line. Not that one needs to worry about long lines for breakfast because there aren't any, at least not at the Subway I visited. As a matter of fact, the one employee at the store this morning was having her morning smoke at the entrance as I arrived. Not being in a hurry, and out of respect for the simple pleasure of a morning smoke and coffee, I encouraged her to continue and enjoy her break. She respectfully ignored my advice, and came in to take my order.

First the coffee: Seattle's Best. Served from a canister. Hot, fresh, a little weak, but not bad at all. Actually, quite good.

The sandwich: I should say that the cost for a coffee and sandwich is $2.50. That's important because expectations are not high for two bucks. I chose the egg, ham, and cheese on an English muffin. It didn't taste bad, I think I may have even detected a hint of egg taste, but the smell of the sandwich was off-putting. I'm not sure if it is the reaction of the egg to the heating apparatus they use or what, but it did have an unusual non-food odor.

The second problem is the appearance of the egg. The eggs are precooked and scrambled, of course, and one has the choice of yellow or white. I assume the yellow has some yolk in it, and the white, no yolk. But the egg is cooked into a thin, crepe-like shape and has the appearance of that plastic vomit kids use to scare other kids. Sorry, that's just the best way to describe it. I would guess the egg, in volume, is about one-half of a small Waffle House type egg, if you know what I mean.

Is it worth $2.50? Well, not really. But if they could figure out the egg part, the muffin, cheese and ham were pretty tasty. And the coffee is good.

My suggestion: call it a breakfast ham and cheese and lose the egg, or whatever that yellow thing was.

Melis Taqueria

I visited Melis Taqueria the other day. The little taco and sandwich stand on Vickery. I was told they a made good torta.

Now, I'm a big fan of the torta sandwich. Huge. It's Mexico's iteration of the Philly cheese steak, and like the cheese steak in Philadelphia, the torta is made and served from street stands all over Mexico. I spent a few summers in San Luis Potosi, Mexico and had a favorite restaurant named Tortugas that made them to order while you sat at the bar-type counter. For about a dollar (back then about 12 pesos) I was served two small but delicious sandwiches and a Coke.

Apparently, there are two major types of torta sandwiches, those made with a soft, almost sweet-roll, like the ones at Melis, and another, like I ordered in Mexico, which are served on a smaller hard roll. I prefer the latter.

It's not that I didn't like the sandwich. For $5 Melis serves a fair sandwich. My sandwich was a little shy on the meat and avocado, but like I say for $5 it wasn't bad. It was tasty and served hot, but I prefer the harder, smaller roll that has been grill toasted.

Just my opinion, folks -- and I will go back to Melis. 

Melis Taqueria
4304 W Vickery Blvd
Fort Worth, TX 76107

Still Benefiting . . . After All These Years.

Back in the glory days of print and mail advertising, around 1982 or thereabouts, I received a piece of mail selling a small set of nuts and bolts. Included were the requisite assortment of screws, nuts, bolts, washers, lock nuts and some-such, plus a plastic cabinet with drawers. I think it sold for around $15.95. I bought it thinking it might come in handy and save me a few trips to the hardware store.

Whoopee-do, I know, but hang in there while I digress to the even less interesting.

At the time, magnetic data storage on hard drives and "mag" tapes had spawned a new way to reach people at home and work, and a better way to "target" potential buyers. Almost overnight the modern mailing-list industry was born and the "renting" of names and addresses of subscribers, buyers, donors, and owners. I had probably been "targeted" as a new home buyer in my direct mail piece.

To put this in the context of other computer products: the personal computer boom was beginning. The IBM PC had landed on desktops with its floppy drives and green monochrome monitors (man they were ugly). Microsoft was selling MS/DOS 1 (boooring) and still 4 years away from their initial public offering. Apple was producing the Lisa Desktop unit (dud), but the first Mac was two years away, as was the first HP laser printer (the miracle machine). Thirty years now, into the popular electronics boom and "Direct Mail" is no longer the best way to target an audience for most companies, the web is, and web-marketing develops in different ways almost daily.

Back to my non-point. I still have the nuts and bolts set purchased in the mail and have just used about 20 of the washers for a shelf I am building. At the cost of gas today I figured it just saved me another five bucks. But the money saved is not what interests me now. It's that I am still finding use for a pretty lame nuts and bolts kit I bought in the mail almost 30 years ago. That, in a old-guy-dad kind of way, is kind of fun.