Villa Arcos serves up ‘soul-mending’ fare
A cold barb of panic shot through me as I scanned the wall menu at Villa Arcos earlier this week.
I couldn’t find the Velia’s Burrito, long a favorite of mine at this family-owned East End spot. Villa Arcos, which has been serving breakfast tacos and more on a shady stretch of Navigation since 1977, closed during the early months of the pandemic and didn’t reopen until this time last year. Could the Torres family — the third generation of owners — have taken it off the menu?
The relief I felt when I finally spotted the item — improbably tucked at the end of the crispy tacos section, and misspelled to boot — is the best I’ve felt all month. Well, until my order arrived and I fell upon my glorious Styrofoam plateful of cheese enchiladas, unwrapped my beloved Bacon Super Taco and peeled back the foil that hid the Velia’s Burrito in all its cheesy, onion-strewn, chile con carne glory.
This was soul-mending stuff, the kind of homey Tex-Mex cooking that can make a day seem full of promise. All was right with the world.
For awhile, I didn’t think it would be. I was Twitter friends with Christian Navarro, the lawyer and community activist who managed his family’s taqueria after his mother, Yolanda Black Navarro, passed away. Her mother, Velia Arcos Rodriguez Durán, had founded the restaurant back when neighborhood folks walked up to a long-gone front window for their tacos.
Under Christian, the rambly, unair-conditioned building got spiffed up. Murky, peeling red paint was replaced by bright primary red that popped. Red umbrellas dotted a charming patio flanked by folk-art murals and tables beckoned under the old oaks out front.
I worried when Villa Arcos closed down in 2021 and exchanged direct messages with Christian about when it might reopen. I kept driving by to stare at the door signage, hopeful for signs of life. When I learned Christian had died at 49 in 2022, I was stricken, sad for the family and fearful that my neighborhood staple might not survive.
But another branch of the family rallied to keep Villa Arcos going. Christian’s cousin Jacob Torres — another of the founder’s grandsons — took over the business, assisted by his dad, Joe, and his mom, Gloria. All three were in attendance the morning I went, schmoozing with friends and neighbors and in general making the place feel like a lowkey reunion picnic.
Importantly, the food is as good as ever. The Velia’s Burrito still sings with primal Tex-Mex flavors, courtesy of a thin, meaty chile con carne that hits the basic notes of beef, salt and red chile pepper. Wrap it up in a soft, slightly fluffed house-made flour tortilla, layered with unusually flavor-packed refried beans, a stretch of orange cheese and some chopped raw onion, and you’ve got a Houston classic.
Same goes for the stupendous Bacon Super Taco, an amalgam of scrambled egg, cubes of griddled potato, cheese, beans and hanks of bacon that range from crisp nubs to thick, chewy ropes. Add a little of the house green salsa and boom.
I had half forgotten the pleasures of Villa Arcos’ cheese enchiladas, made with red tortillas that peek like cheerful pennants from the chile con carne and wildly stretchy cheese. This is Texas nursery food of a high order.
Even the refried beans and the Spanish rice — so springy and pilaf-like a Persian would approve — are superior iterations rather than the usual throwaways.
Breakfast is still served all day, but there’s online ordering now, too, and you can pay with a credit card. The powerful air conditioning is new, too, and the serveyourself generous cups of coffee seem better than they used to be. But I was cheered by the sight of a mighty crack running through the red-tiled floor and by the discovery that my favorite seat, in the snug, semi-serve dining room, looked just as it always has.
Said perch is at the eastern corner of a red-painted counter that skirts the front of the room. On a good day, the window there still admits shifting patches of sunlight that make my grub look strangely celestial.
Around me on my latest visit milled a collection of Houstonians in work shirts, cargo shorts, tool belts and even reflective vests, plus a baby buggy wheeled in by a young family. Out under the trees, gentlemen of a certain age sat at picnic tables shooting the breeze.
Gloria Torres, with her glamorous sweep of silver-white hair, told me that April 14, Villa Arcos would celebrate its first full year back in business. Then she took me around back, where a standalone walk-in cooler flanks the parking lot, to show me the new mural marking for the occasion.
The first piece I ever wrote about Villa Arcos, a yellowing news clip from 2010, still hangs on the wall. In it, I called Villa Arcos “an inexpensive, everyday eatery of the sort that makes the fabric of life in Houston so rich.”
It still applies. In these trying times, that’s more important than ever.