Cantina Laredo, DFW

With an airport the size of Manhattan, can you expect big-city-quality eats deep in the heart of Texas? Tex-Mex chain resto Cantina Laredo is one of the few restaurants in DFW’s Terminal D that rises above take-out-grade food. It also rises above the vacuous, mall-like terminal.

We tried a couple of margaritas:

Each with a different tequila from their decent list. At the end of the day, though, we couldn’t really taste a big difference between the Patrón and the El Tesoro, so save yourself a few pesos and go for Tesoro. The Texas-sized guacamole:

Would have been a  worthy contender in our own Great Guac Hunt, with a good balance of cream and chunk, crunchy onions and fresh tomatoes and cilantro. Feather-light warm chips and a solidly good salsa rounded out the offering. The cheese enchiladas in my Puebla:

Had a certain Hormel-chili-and-Velveeta chic to them, but the accessory beef taco al carbon was a study in simplicity. Tasty marinated skirt steak, grilled and rolled in a fluffy flour taco, uncannily diminutive in the home of big hair and big food.

Cantina Laredo
DFW Terminal D and other locations around the Southwest (yet, curiously, not Laredo)

One year ago today … I agreed with Michael Bauer. No everyday occurrence, that.