1200 Broadway
Van Horn, TX
2/20/10
Van Horn Texas is not a town designed for the people who live in it. Van Horn is desi gned for the people who are just passing through. The casinos, the billboards advertising the nearby golf course are all just attempts to get you to stay a little longer in a place that really is only for getting through. Formerly – you can tell just looking at the terrain – the bottom of a prehistoric ocean, this dried bottom of a former terrarium goes on and on for as far as you can see and then when you get past that, for father beyond that. And so Van Horn is perfectly placed if you’re hungry, tired, need fuel, or have to pee, but I have no idea how anyone lives there for more than a couple of nights while enroute to wherever else they’re going.
And so we were in Van Horn for a night, a stop between here and there, and after admiring a pink and gold desert sunset over the broken tops of men’s folly, we looked around for a place to eat, and found that Chuy’s was our option. The last time I was in Van Horn, we just went to the tiny grocery store and made our own separate ways that night (I remember slicing a cucumber to calm a panicked coworker; everyone on the team but us two had caught some deadly 24-hour thing and we were a day behind schedule), but this go-around we went out to where the locals go. And, as it turns out, where John Madden goes, too, whenever he’s passing through Van Horn….whenever that is. There’s a seat with his name on it, next to the fire place, just waiting for him to come back.
Yes, Jon Madden, the football guy John Madden, has a favorite restaurant in a town that you and probably most of the rest of the world have never heard of or seen, but according to the very loving and grateful statement from the owning-family, John has mentioned Manny’s in Van Horn in major publications and, so to speak, put it on the map. His favorite dish is the beef enchilada, if I remember correctly. And to prove it all, the joint is a mash of Mexican restaurant decor – including a mural depicting Chuy’s, the antique car out front, Van Horn’s main drag, and Jesus himself – the original Chuy – coming over the mountains, ostensibly for dinner with John – and Madden memorabilia, including a big old special chair at the table closest to the fire and furthest from the door with the man’s name on it. So if that doesn’t make it all true, I don’t know what will.
Well Mr. Madden wasn’t there that night, but boy we sure were, all eleven of us, no reservation, just push all of those tables together and we’ll be the obvious out of towners. And we were. The place isn’t big – it holds maybe 100 people full house, and there were, over the course of the night, maybe eight other folks who passed through and shot us “who the hell are they?” looks, as everyone in our group asked in their most out of town voices for more chips, water, extra salsa, and sour cream. I don’t know if our large white-lady local waitress with her sadly permed dishwater blonde hair in a grey scrunchie has handled groups our size much, but she shouldered it and soldiered on; and by that I mean, at least she didn’t yell at us. We weren’t in Kansas anymore, we were in Texas. And this place was sincere. Except… you know how the joke about Mexican food is that it’s really just five ingredients arranged in different ways? Well Manny’s has got that number down to about three and a half. The chili reanos were the best thing on the table, spicy, fried crispy, lots of cheese, flavor. And the rest was, well, better than nothing, in the Texas desert, with no other restaurants open. But this wasn’t your grandmother’s kitchen, unless your grandmother cooked out of industrial-sized cans and restaurant-sized packages. Chipotle feels more authentic in terms of food, but this place had its own pizzazz going on that had no concern for whether you were having an exciting culinary experience.
My meal was utterly passable, though really nothing to write anywhere about: I ordered the cheese and bean burrito, with sides of beans, rice, and avocado, and a Shiner Bock to wash it down – I know, German beer with Mexican food in rural I-40 Texas, I could have removed at least one cross-hatch and ordered a Dos Equis or something. But they had two beers on tap: Budweiser and Bock, so I split the difference. I could have gone the route of the rest of the table and ordered a wine margarita. What, you say, what’s a wine margarita, I don’t think such a thing exists. Well my sweet reader, it exists if you’re a Mexican restaurant without a liquor license (thus no tequila), and you mix white wine with marg mix and put it through the slushy machine. Giant punch bowl glasses, lime wedge on the rim.
The whole thing really fell down for me when I ordered the pecan pie and got not only an obviously store bought factory made wedge of Karo syrup and sad little nut meats, but it tasted awful. That’s what ya get for reaching beyond what you should already know is reality in Texas.
So if ever you find yourself in Van Horn at an eatin’ time, don’t go to Chuy’s expecting amazing. Or even plentiful, though you can order as much as you want. Or to see John Madden, though that chair is definitely waiting for him. Go expecting a place that is like no other, that has been open for a long time in a location that would have ground most establishments out of business long ago, and that laughs at itself while strictly forbidding you to even think about doing the same. I doubt I will even find another place like it.
The Amusing Mouth 