Comalito HTX in the Airline Farmer's Market Complex

I came away thinking, “I don’t want to eat Mexican food anywhere else from now on in Houston.”  I would normally wait several months before trying out or commenting on a restaurant that had just opened. To allow them time for new restaurant growing pains.

But everything about today’s meal was very good. Perfectly CDMX to be specific. Because of family, I have been traveling in Mexico for over 50 years. Our family friends live in Mexico City, a.k.a..CDMX. And you can imagine just how many meals I have enjoyed in that wonderful city. 

My tacos were bistec. This is a good taco to gauge a place by. Because in Mexico where there is such intense competition between the different Taquerias and price cutting is common you can go the full range of very tough and gristle-y ones to very tender ones. My taco today was as tender and perfect as it gets. And the sauces that came with it were excellent. in addition, I ordered some thing that is typical of CDMX But not as common up here. And that is the.”costra”, or, chicharrón de queso. A thin slice of cheese is grilled and then rolled into a crunchy deliciousness. And theirs was about as good as it gets. 

The mushroom soup was excellent. In style of the La Marquesa area on the way to Toluca. Mushrooms, stock, onion, garlic, and strips of guajillo chiles. Perfect.

I’d skip the tortilla soup as it was more like a thick chile puree gravy than a soup. Not recommended. 

But definitely try the flan. I saw, but did not sample, their churros, which looked perfectly made.

Tortillas.  They use several special types of corn to nixtamalize. It's one of the things that they feature. The tortillas are good, but dry. They could be softer and more flexible. But the tortillera making them does have the technique down to make them puff up. You typically need two-three different heat zones so you can move the tortillas from a lower temperature area to a higher temperature area. I've had tortillas in Oaxaca and Puebla that were so soft and pliable that you'd swear they were flour tortillas. But here at Comalito, that is not the case. These are harder and drier tortillas, still within the tortilla spectrum but not to my liking.The sign that a tortillera knows her stuff is when you watch the tortilla release its interior steam and puff up. You have to properly sear it, flip several times, do some heat transfers, and then know precisely when to give it a press to cause it to inflate. .