After one day without visiting Mexican restaurants, we went to Blanco Café. Mr. Alejandro F. San Miguel, a Mexican migrant from Piedras Negras, Coahuila, founded this place back in 1974. Wanting to go into business for himself, he opened a restaurant with the help of his family, which included his wife Elida and 10 children. As happens for many migrant entrepreneurs, during the first years that the café was open, Mr. San Miguel continued working in other jobs he used to have. And only after the restaurant became self-sustainable did he quit those jobs.
In the internet page of Blanco café, the history of this restaurant pointed out that Breakfast All Day has been its trademark, in part, because Mr. San Miguel understood that, in order to make ends meet, people may have had to keep different schedules and work different shifts, and that, as he put it, “their breakfast is our lunch or dinner”. Of course, in these days of crisis, Mr. San Miguel’s saying is still valid. And not to mention that prices are pretty low in relation to the high amount of food received in every plate.
The front page of Blanco Café’s menu shows the background image of a light blue Caribbean beach. The legend “Voted Best Enchiladas in San Antonio” is highlighted. Although until now I have not be able to found when and who ranked them as the best enchiladas in town, I’m sure they are, at least for Sanantonians, such as Crissy, Leah’s friend who recommended we come to this place, and a lot of people who support this fact in different Web pages.
A particularity of the Blanco Café enchiladas is that the tortillas are red! Just like the nachos we had in Phoenix. And yet, to me this is one of the similarities between southwestern / Tex-Mex food, they change shapes and color to market food so that it looks exotic, folkloric and funny; red tortillas, green nachos, yellow Mexican cheese.
This time, Leah got cheese enchiladas, the house specialty, and I asked for the beef ones, and a taco de Migas. As at many Mexican restaurants in the states, a considerable amount of beans and rice were bordering our enchiladas. They were also dressed by a lot of red sauce and a big amount of yellow cheese. Leah’s combo was also served with some fajitas and hand made tortillas. Both of us were kind of disappointed with the fajitas, because we were expecting they were accompanied with the traditional green, red and white vegetables, but the fajitas were only fried beef. By fajitas they were meaning the cut of meat, not the traditional Tex – Mex plate. There was a strange fusion of entities: exotic/traditional red enchiladas and plain dark fajitas.

Like at Chico’s tacos in El Paso, Blanco Cafe, is an intergenerational point of reference for some Sanantonians. To eat into those places is a shared family and friend tradition. They have become emblematic points of references for their cities and inhabitants. California Mexican food style, Southwestern food and Tex-Mex food are not only the consequence of the way Mexican food has been marketed in the U.S, but in fact they are also culinary traditions shared by people from different ethnic background and races living in those states. Maybe that’s the reason why expatriate U.S citizens living in Europe use Mexican restaurants as point of encounter. They grow up with those flavors, and because of this fact they see themselves as bodies allowed to evaluate the authenticity of foreign Mexican entities.