MAKE A RUN FOR THE BORDER AT LAS MAMALONAS
Every once in a while I crave a good Norteño-style burger in which avocado appears and the meats don’t stop with a groundbeef patty or staid ol’ bacon.
So Las Mamalonas Burger, a bumptious little restaurant on the leg ofWinkler Drive that runs off Howard, north of the Gulf Freeway, caught my fancy. Scouting around online, I goggled at its roster of meats-upon-meats burgers featuring salami, chorizo, pork stacked and cooked on the revolving trompo, you name it.
Las Mamalonas — which translates as “the idlers,” or in Mexican American street slang, more or less, as “my parents’ truck” — lives in the same strip center that back in the 1980s hosted the original location of the French Gourmet Bakery. Back then, Houston didn’t know from a sablé. Now a washateria and a carniceria/tortilleria inhabit the strip.
Come along, in your truck if you’ve got one, for the wild burger ride.
PRICE: $5.95 for a classic Norteño-style La Regia, “The Queen,” the No. 1 burger on a boggling list of 14 increasingly baroque variations. ORDERING: There’s no online ordering here, unless you go the third-party delivery route. But you can call in an order ahead of time at 832-804-8429. Or just show up and order in person, remembering to wear a mask, which is required; and to bring cash, which is required, too. (No worries; there’s an on-site ATM.) ARCHITECTURE: Salad stuff divided between lettuce on the bottom and everything else on top.
On a sprawling, sesame-seeded, toasted bun goes shredded iceberg, a wide-and-thin beef patty, plus a splodge of sticky white cheese that glues on a thinny-thin ham slice. Next comes slices of tomato, red onion and avocado, anointed with a generous amount of mayo and yellow mustard.
QUALITY: I amused myself by how much I enjoyed this burger, extra-well-done beef patty and all.
No prizes will be won for beef quality or meat juice splatter here, but darned if the extracrunchy, salty sear on the patty didn’t exert its own spunky magic. So did the cheerful sum of the parts.
The mustard pop, the Norteño harmonies of the white cheese/ ham/avocado trio, and the double-wide acreage of the burger all created a lively effect. The bun squished down in transit, which made the compact pile of layers easy fun to scarf. And scarf I did, dear readers. Scarf I did.
OOZE RATING: Mostly condiment-based. Did I care? I did not. VALUE: Fair.
LETTER GRADE: Stealth B. BONUS POINTS: Careful attention is given to add-ons and condiments that are included with your order. I ended up with a whole festival: red and green salsas in tiny plastic cups; bagged portions of jalapeñoand-carrot escabeche; and, for each taco I ordered for later, tons of chopped onion and cilantro stashed in plastic wrap together with half a lime.
The service was prompt and considerate, a further boon. STUFF FOR LATER: Hoo boy. Am I glad I’ve got this nimble little joint in my rotation now, because there’s a lot of unpretentious food to enjoy here. Biggest surprise was an enormous and opulent baked potato loaded with cheese and sour cream and deep-red-rimmed trompo meat, because why not combine Texas barbecue stylings with Mexican street-food tropes? And serve it with crackly tostadas to use as dipping implements? Houston, baby.
I devoured a good Pirata taco, Norteño style with griddled flour tortilla wrap, stuffed with chopped grilled bistek (flank or
sirloin, I think) and a gilding of white cheese. Then I consumed its trompo twin of ruddy-hued pork trompo slices Gringa style, with white cheese.
And don’t even get me started about the plump, bacon-wrapped jalapeños stuffed with cream cheese and swaddled in little double-wrapped corn tortillas. Serious hot, and just what the doctor ordered as a pick-me-up when you re-pan-fry the chiles to crisp up the bacon and re-melt the cheese. LOCAL COLOR: I immediately fell for the lovinghands-of-home holiday
décor in this bright, boxy room. The bats and spiders and rubber chicken suspended from the ceiling charmed me. The universally masked customers, considerately spacing themselves through the room, made me feel safer, as did a powerful fan mounted high on a wall so that air circulated and blew out whenever the door opened.
I’ll probably go back for more.