Driving down Lewisville-Clemmons Road in Clemmons, you can’t help but notice the plethora of restaurant choices. On just a quarter-mile of the main drag south of Interstate 40, you can choose from about a dozen chains.
What you might not notice, practically hidden in plain sight, is a little storefront on the edge of a strip center that announces El Taquito Taqueria Mexicana. It’s at 2518-A Lewisville-Clemmons Road in John’s Dockside Plaza — the same center that holds 2520 Tavern.
El Taquito is known among the Hispanic community. But it seems to have escaped the attention of the greater Clemmons population despite being around for 10 years.
On multiple visits, business ranged from slow to middling, even at prime-time lunch hours. Owner Gilberto Martinez said that though lunch is his peak time of day, winter is hardly his peak time of year. “We’ll get busy in the summertime when people can eat outside,” he said. Maybe more passersby will notice the place then, too.
It’s also a shame because people are constantly telling me that Clemmons needs more good restaurants. Sure, the village has a few favorite independent places — Pete’s Family Restaurant, Clemmons Kitchen, 2520 Tavern, Ronni’s and Full Moon Oyster Bar were top picks on an informal Facebook poll last week. But many people were hard-pressed to pick five favorites in Clemmons, and it’s a common fact that many Clemmons residents drive to Winston-Salem when they want something besides fast food.
As one reader said, “When I think of Clemmons and food, I mainly think of chains.” In fact, it can be hard to find an independent in the sea of fast-food and other chain restaurants — even if a few of those chains, such as Dairi-O, are locally owned.
As time has moved on, though, the Hispanic influence has spread out. Nowhere is this more visible than in restaurants. I still have favorite Mexican spots in Southside — La Tili, La Perlita and El Rancho Taqueria, to name a few. But now if I happen to be out Reynolda Road in the Bethabara area, I know I can visit Taco Riendo #3. Or if I’m in the vicinity of Jonestown Road, I can stop in at Taqueria Los Juanes.
Across the street from El Taquito, there is a Taco Bell and Mi Pueblo. And Monte de Rey Mexican Restaurant is just two miles away. (Mi Pueblo and Monte de Rey are both locally owned chains.) But they don’t serve the food I’m talking about: cabeza (beef cheek), lengua (beef tongue) and cueritos (pork skin) tacos; carnitas tortas almost as big as your face; ceviche tostadas; and menudo (tripe stew).
Though the menu has its share of items made from organ meats that appeal mainly to the hard-core Mexican food lovers, it also has beginner-friendly steak and chicken. You can’t get a ground-beef taco here, but the staff will make a burger or chicken tenders for the unadventurous or picky eaters in your family.
Customers order at the counter, and the staff brings the food to the table. The menu at El Taquito is large for such a small place. You can get Mexican breakfast all day, mojarra frita (fried whole fish), caldo 7 mares (seven seas seafood stew), nopales con huevo (cactus with eggs), ceviche tostada, taquitos and a lot more.
But the core of the menu is the tacos, tortas, sopes and tostadas made with a handful of meats — these are slightly different delivery methods for the same ingredients. Tostadas are fried, crisp tortillas. Sopes are thicker tortillas. The bread for the tortas — Mexican sandwiches — is made in-house. El Taquito will also make you a burrito, but I have not seen anyone order one.
It doesn’t really matter which vehicle you choose, because the heart and soul of all of them — in fact, the heart and soul of El Taquito — is the list of about a dozen fillings. Beyond standard steak, chicken, fish and vegetables, there is chorizo (spicy sausage), al pastor (marinated pork and pineapple), sesos (beef brains), carnitas (fried pork), lengua (tongue), tripa (tripe), cueritos (pork skin), buche (stomach), saudero (brisket) and cabeza (beef cheek).
After ordering, first-timers will be directed to help themselves to the hot pot of pinto beans on the counter. They also will be shown the salsa bar — a nice touch that I wish more restaurants had. “I do that because I don’t like it when other restaurants give you just a little salsa and then charge you for more,” Martinez said.
The salsa bar is a chilled table with radishes, limes, pickled jalapenos, shredded cabbage, pico de gallo, spicy red sauce and more. Customers help themselves. And if that isn’t enough, the cashiers also deliver bottles of freshly made red and green salsa to the table. The salsas come when they deliver your order — which in all my visits has never taken more than 10 minutes. El Taquito goes through gallons of salsa — partly because it will sell pints and even quarts of it to go.
Some restaurant-goers may remember Martinez’s former restaurant. Back in 1998, he opened I Bambini, an Italian restaurant, a half-mile away from El Taquito at 2385 Lewisville-Clemmons Road (a spot more recently occupied by Brothers). It was a bit unusual for an Italian restaurant, but it also was wildly popular — so much so that by 2003 two more locations opened, one in Winston-Salem and one in Mooresville. Unfortunately, they were all gone by 2007. Martinez said he never could find enough good help to staff three restaurants.
He learned his lesson, though, in opening El Taquito — a restaurant small enough that he can run it himself with just a line cook and a couple of cashiers. “I told my wife I’d cooked Italian all my life, but now I’m going to cook Mexican,” said Martinez, a native of Durango, Mexico, who came to the United States as a teenager.
Click here to view the original web page at www.journalnow.com