CHANFLES!

This place wasn’t really on the radar for the HR’s but sometimes you just have to eat, can’t hurt to try. Only available on weekend mornings, they have a few decent looking items on their breakfast menu but I stuck to the classics, though with this side of fried potatoes they seem willing to play with their food. And those papas really were a bit of fun: tender, salty, and tasty, I could’ve ate a whole plate of ’em. The sauce for the HR’s was packing a fair amount of flavor though it was a bit over shadowed by the extra large chunks of onion and peppers, but at least no cheese to spoil the taste! Sadly, a promising weekend desayuno was marred by the plain ol’ soft tortilla underneath and the hard over-cooked eggs. Q-vo Don Pescado, yo que les hice? Haci nos tratamos? At 6 bucks a plate, next time I’ll just get the potatoes.

Señor Fish
618 Mission St. South Pasadena 626.403.0145

Next stop on the Huevos Rancheros tour is at Villas Durango over in Highland Park (5672 York Blvd. 323.255.1491) an eatery that specializes in food from Yucatan. They are popular mostly for their meat dishes (cochinita pibil being the culprit of note) but they pull off a decent meatless meal as well. As you can see from the pic above, they do put some cheese on their HR’s (tsk,tsk) but luckily not enough to distract from the dish. The red sauce has enough chiles in the mix to make it flavorful which is surprising as most everywhere you often just taste bland tomato base. I’ve been coming to Villas Durango for a few years and one thing that always strikes me about their HR’s is the freshness of the eggs they use. The quality of eggs is not something to which I pay much attention so its striking when you suddenly get reminded of how eggs are supposed to taste: fresh is good! That alone makes you forget that the tortilla holding it all together is an unfried run-of-the-corn-mill plastic bag tortilla, which is particularly puzzling as they make their own hechas a mano to accompany the dish.

Though they are quite thick, these tortillas are very good, and if you mostly refrain from using a fork when there is a tortilla available (otherwise known as the mexican way of eating) then these will serve you nicely! You can also get platanos fritos, though as you might be able to see from this pic, they were too green and tough, but the waitress told us she wouldn’t charge if we didn’t like them. So despite the missing crispy tortilla base, and at a mere $3.25, Villas Durango puts out an enjoyable plate of Huevos Rancheros. Just one more step…