San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)

This Bay Area restaurant makes the best Mexican stews. It’s not even close

Guisados stand out at El Burro Veloz, which offers 8 varieties of the popular dish

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There are plenty of decent guisados in the Bay Area, but finding the best versions of these luscious, saucy Mexican stews takes some searching.

The most memorable guisados, to me, are the ones that add extra chiles, that have a soothing allure and are bold enough to comfort and stimulate the senses at the same time. Those can be hard to find, and even less common are places that specialize in them.

That makes El Burro Veloz, a casual Mexican restaurant in Antioch offering eight varieties of guisado at a time, worth the pilgrimage to the eastern end of the Bay Area, where, as poet Shel Silverstei­n might say, the sidewalk ends.

Antioch is hardly considered an exciting food city in the Bay Area. Yet I continue to find excellent Mexican food with each visit. (Census data shows the area’s Hispanic population has grown considerab­ly in recent years, from 13% of the total in the 1980s to more than 30% today.) The Antioch Flea Market is like a weekly food bazaar of birria tacos, Zacatecas-style gorditas and abundant antojitos. El Pueblo Taqueria, located inside a panaderia, makes some of the region’s most deeply flavorful carnitas.

Then there’s my most recent fascinatio­n, El Burro Veloz. Located in a shopping center, the restaurant has an informal, unpretenti­ous vibe. The red and black ceiling tiles are color-coordinate­d to match the logo of an ice-climbing donkey. A TV screen in the corner streams movies or is tuned to the latest sporting event. On weekends, customers tend to pop in and out, enjoying a quick lunch at the bar or picking up takeout orders. Weekends draw the late breakfast crowd seeking hot gorditas and a cold Modelo.

The guisados can be enjoyed in every type of dish, from tacos to tortas. But the gorditas ($3.50) are the restaurant’s strong suit. They’re like circular Hot Pockets made of maiz and stuffed to the brim with guisados like picadillo (spiced ground beef and veggies), pork in green salsa or chicharron in red salsa.

Just as rice is crucial for good sushi, quality masa is paramount for great guisados. It not only serves as the vehicle for consumptio­n, it also comprises the majority of the dish, be it taco or gordita. El Burro Veloz sources its masa from La Finca Tortilleri­a in Oakland. It’s made with yellow maiz that has a resonant taste of corn, like freshly made popcorn. So dishes get off to a great start.

To make her gorditas, Irma Padilla Martinez, who owns the restaurant with her two sons, Ivan Barron Padilla and Ernesto Padilla Martinez, grabs a fistful of masa and presses it down until it’s slightly thicker than a tortilla. After cooking the corn puck over a plancha, she makes a surgical incision along the edge to open it, then loads it with refried beans and adds a generous guisado scoop.

The most stunning filling is the pork in salsa verde, which is simmered for two hours until the sauce reduces down to a rich, thick consistenc­y. The pork fat-infused, earthy salsa has a spicy, indulgent quality. The chicharron en salsa roja is also extraordin­ary. The fried pigskin is wonderfull­y slippery and slightly sticky after its long bath in a bubbling cauldron of salsa made of guajillo and chile de arbol peppers.

Among the milder options, the steak and cactus combinatio­n is stellar, too. It works particular­ly well in a burrito ($11), where the guisado’s soupy liquid vividly flavors the beans and rice. Then there’s the vibrant, crimson-colored barbacoa, which is made with pork instead of the more common beef or lamb, and is best experience­d as a taco dorado ($2.89). A relatively small taco, this potent red crescent moon is fried over a hot griddle in the spiced pork lard left from cooking the barbacoa. The shattering­ly crisp tortillas contain a cherry red, shredded pork core.

The more traditiona­l taco fillings at El Burro Veloz are exquisite as well, like the extremely crunchy tripa ($4.25), which is always served crisp, and the remarkably bouncy lengua ($4.25). If you’re a cheese fiend, you can add shredded Jack cheese to the barbacoa tacos ($3.30), though I prefer them without. When I am in a cheesy mood, I stick to the perrona taco ($5), made with a 6-inch corn tortilla (really more of a quesadilla) padded with guisados. I’m partial to the puerco en salsa verde, whose spice doesn’t get lost in the molten cheese.

The torta ahogada, the drowned sandwich hailing from Guadalajar­a, is sadly missing the essence I love about the dish. The tomato sauce is a little too sweet, and the bread is too soggy, making it impossible to eat with your hands.

El Burro Veloz got its start over a decade ago. In 2010, the Martinez family left Tlaquepaqu­e, Jalisco, and landed in Concord. After working double shifts at Taco Bell and McDonald’s for a year, Irma decided to try selling food from her backyard. With little cooking experience of her own, she would call her mom back home for recipes, trying her best to re-create them. Today, virtually all of the restaurant’s recipes are still abuela’s.

To build an audience, Irma’s sons invited people from the neighborho­od to try their mom’s food. Through word of mouth, the family built a loyal following. So loyal, in fact, that customers followed them as they moved from Bay Point to their first restaurant in Martinez in 2019. After two years there, they moved El Burro to Antioch, where it opened in May 2021 with double the amount of space and ample parking. Their followers came with them.

As long as the family keeps making their elegant guisados, I count myself among them.

 ?? Photos by Carolyn Fong/Special to The Chronicle ?? Barbacoa tacos, made with pork instead of the more common beef or lamb at El Burro Veloz. At the restaurant, they are best enjoyed as a taco dorado, fried over a hot griddle in the spiced pork lard left from cooking the barbacoa.
Photos by Carolyn Fong/Special to The Chronicle Barbacoa tacos, made with pork instead of the more common beef or lamb at El Burro Veloz. At the restaurant, they are best enjoyed as a taco dorado, fried over a hot griddle in the spiced pork lard left from cooking the barbacoa.
 ?? Cesar Hernandez/The Chronicle ?? Tacos filled with stews from El Burro Veloz in Antioch. The restaurant offers eight varieties of guisado at a time.
Cesar Hernandez/The Chronicle Tacos filled with stews from El Burro Veloz in Antioch. The restaurant offers eight varieties of guisado at a time.
 ?? ?? The restaurant has an informal, unpretenti­ous vibe. On weekends, customers tend to pop in and out, enjoying a quick lunch at the bar.
The restaurant has an informal, unpretenti­ous vibe. On weekends, customers tend to pop in and out, enjoying a quick lunch at the bar.
 ?? Carolyn Fong/Special to The Chronicle ?? Co-owner Irma Padilla Martinez hand-makes tortilla in the kitchen at El Burro Veloz in Antioch.
Carolyn Fong/Special to The Chronicle Co-owner Irma Padilla Martinez hand-makes tortilla in the kitchen at El Burro Veloz in Antioch.

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