Chenchos Restaurant Review and Recipe

We always recommend Chenchos restaurant to our guests and rave about their homemade salsa and made to order Mexican specialties. They're number one on TripAdvisor's list of Troncones restaurants. See the article for some mouth watering pictures plus a recipe for chilli rellano shared by Chef Angelica.

ARTICLE – Chenchos: A Restaurant Review

As soon as I discovered we were heading to Troncones, I scouted out what Trip Advisor had to say about the local restaurants, as I do whenever we arrive in a new location. There were 15 listed, and right at the top of that list was Chenchos. It was described as a small, family run place, with delicious food and low prices. That sounded right up our alley, so a few days after arriving we went to check it out.

We have noticed a big difference in the service, as well as quality of food at places that are run by the owners and their families, compared to places with employees who are just there to do a job.

Chenchos is a real family operation, located right next to the family home. We were warmly welcomed and exchanged a bit of banter, mostly centred around Levi and his blue eyes (the usual these days). Being set back a street from the cool ocean breeze, we chose a table under a fan. A big white dog lazed on the sandy floor and barely batted an eyelid as we sat. Looking around, the dining area was brightly painted and had an eclectic range of paintings hanging on the wall.

We were the first customers of the evening, which happens when you dine with an eight month old, but as the restaurant filled up, more of the family members, including Chencho himself, appeared to help out.

Once we got some drinks, we ordered what was recommended as one of the house specialities – Chilli Rellano de Cameron (Chilli stuffed with shrimp) as well as some enchiladas. The food took quite a while to arrive, but when it did, I understood why. Everything was handmade, from scratch, from fresh, local ingredients. I am working on getting the Chenchos crew to share some of their secret recipes with me, but haven’t had any luck… yet*

This chilli dish is the most delicious meal either Mark or I have eaten in Mexico. A large green ‘poblano’ chilli (looks and tastes like a hybrid of a jalepeno and a capsicum) was filled with cheesy prawns, and then battered. It was served smothered in a creamy pink-coloured sauce with the traditional Mexican side of rice and refried beans. The flavours were amazing.

The enchiladas suisas (swiss enchiladas) were also really good – corn tortillas filled with chicken and cheese, baked and served with a green chilli sauce, which is made with tomatillos (a special variety of small green tomato found in Mexico).

We have returned to Chenchos a few times since then, and everything we’ve ordered has been amazing. We recently went for my birthday dinner and tried out the tiritas (also known as ceviche – raw fish, marinated in lime juice with red onions and avocados).

For main course we tried out another house speciality – prawns and cheese, wrapped in bacon and served with a house made BBQ sauce. It wasn’t your traditional Mexican flavours, but it was delicious.

We also had the prawn and mushroom quesadillas (flour tortillas filled with cheese, mushrooms and prawns, like a toasted sandwich, Mexican style), which were served with a pico de gallo salsa.

As it was my birthday, we got a complimentary dessert – house made lime and coconut icecream which was a perfect way to finish the meal.

Levi chowed down on cornchips and crackers topped with avocado, his favourite Mexican food!

We have a few more months here in Troncones, so I’m sure we will visit Chencho and his family a few more times, and I’ll work on getting a few of those secret recipes!

*Update.

Our fourth visit to Chenchos, and the wonderful chef Angelica shared her chilli rellano recipe. 

RECIPE – Chillis Stuffed With Prawns (Chili Rellano De Cameron)

Possibly the tastiest dish we have found in Mexico,  here is the secret recipe for  Chenchos Famous Chilli Rellanos de Cameron

Ingredients (makes 4)

4 poblano chillis (use green peppers (capsicum) if poblanos or other large chillis are unavailable)

3 eggs, beaten until stiff and fluffy

200g firm melting cheese, grated (mozzarella or similar)

oil for frying (deep or shallow)

Filling

500g peeled prawns, chopped to bite size pieces

2 tomatoes, chopped

1/2 onion chopped

2 cloves garlic

Salt and pepper

Sauce

8 roma (egg) tomatoes

1 cup sour cream

2 T chicken stock (or 2 stock cubes)

Method

1. Saute onions until soft, then add garlic, tomatoes, salt and pepper to taste
2. Add prawns until just cooked, a few minutes
3. Slit open chillis longways. Scrape out seeds and pith (or leave in for a spicier taste)
4. Divide cheese and prawn filling mixture equally among chillis, stuffing inside.
5. Use toothpicks to close chillis back up
6. Blitz tomatoes for the sauce in a blender and then put into a pan. Add chicken stock powder or crumbled cubes. Cook until stock has dissolved into tomatoes, then stir in sour cream until well combined and hot through. Do not boil sauce or it may separate. Keep warm until ready to serve.
7. Dip chillis into beaten egg mixture and then straight into hot oil for frying. Cook until the egg batter has set.
8. Place chillis on plated and cover with sauce. Serve with rice, beans, or whatever you like.

(From World Food, Nomadic Lifestyle blog)  culinarynomads.com

Anthony Bourdain on Mexicans, Mexico and Why America Should Love Them

anthonybourdain.tumblr.com

Under The Volcano

Americans love Mexican food. We consume nachos, tacos, burritos, tortas, enchiladas, tamales and anything resembling Mexican in enormous quantities. We love Mexican beverages, happily knocking back huge amounts of tequila, mezcal and Mexican beer every year. We love Mexican people—as we sure employ a lot of them. Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, look after our children. As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy—the restaurant business as we know it—in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers. Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are “stealing American jobs”. But in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position—or even a job as prep cook. Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans, provably, simply won’t do. 

We love Mexican drugs. Maybe not you personally, but “we”, as a nation, certainly consume titanic amounts of them—and go to extraordinary lengths and expense to acquire them. We love Mexican music, Mexican beaches, Mexican architecture, interior design, Mexican films.

So, why don’t we love Mexico?

We throw up our hands and shrug at what happens and what is happening just across the border. Maybe we are embarrassed. Mexico, after all, has always been there for us, to service our darkest needs and desires. Whether it’s dress up like fools and get pass-out drunk and sun burned on Spring break in Cancun, throw pesos at strippers in Tijuana, or get toasted on Mexican drugs, we are seldom on our best behavior in Mexico. They have seen many of us at our worst. They know our darkest desires.

In the service of our appetites, we spend billions and billions of dollars each year on Mexican drugs—while at the same time spending billions and billions more trying to prevent those drugs from reaching us. The effect on our society is everywhere to be seen. Whether it’s kids nodding off and overdosing in small town Vermont, gang violence in LA, burned out neighborhoods in Detroit— it’s there to see. What we don’t see, however, haven’t really noticed, and don’t seem to much care about, is the 80,000 dead—mostly innocent victims in Mexico, just in the past few years. 80,000 dead. 80,000 families who’ve been touched directly by the so-called “War On Drugs”.   

Mexico. Our brother from another mother. A country, with whom, like it or not, we are inexorably, deeply involved, in a close but often uncomfortable embrace. Look at it. It’s beautiful. It has some of the most ravishingly beautiful beaches on earth. Mountains, desert, jungle. Beautiful colonial architecture, a tragic, elegant, violent, ludicrous, heroic, lamentable, heartbreaking history. Mexican wine country rivals Tuscany for gorgeousness. Its archeological sites—the remnants of great empires, unrivaled anywhere. And as much as we think we know and love it,  we have barely scratched the surface of what Mexican food really is. It is NOT melted cheese over a tortilla chip. It is not simple, or easy. It is not simply ‘bro food’ halftime. It is in fact, old— older even than the great cuisines of Europe and often deeply complex, refined, subtle, and sophisticated. A true mole sauce, for instance, can take DAYS to make, a balance of freshly (always fresh) ingredients, painstakingly prepared by hand. It could be, should be, one of the most exciting cuisines on the planet. If we paid attention. The old school cooks of Oaxaca make some of the more difficult to make and nuanced sauces in gastronomy. And some of the new generation, many of whom have trained in the kitchens of America and Europe have returned home to take Mexican food to new and thrilling new heights.

It’s a country I feel particularly attached to and grateful for. In nearly 30 years of cooking professionally, just about every time I walked into a new kitchen, it was a Mexican guy who looked after me, had my back, showed me what was what, was there—and on the case—when the cooks more like me, with backgrounds like mine—ran away to go skiing or surfing—or simply “flaked.” I have been fortunate to track where some of those cooks come from, to go back home with them. To small towns populated mostly by women—where in the evening, families gather at the town’s phone kiosk, waiting for calls from their husbands, sons and brothers who have left to work in our kitchens in the cities of the North. I have been fortunate enough to see where that affinity for cooking comes from, to experience moms and grandmothers preparing many delicious things, with pride and real love, passing that food made by hand, passed from their hands to mine. 

In years of making television in Mexico, it’s one of the places we, as a crew, are happiest when the day’s work is over. We’ll gather round a street stall and order soft tacos with fresh, bright, delicious tasting salsas—drink cold Mexican beer, sip smoky mezcals, listen with moist eyes to sentimental songs from street musicians. We will look around and remark, for the hundredth time, what an extraordinary place this is.  

The received wisdom is that Mexico will never change. That is hopelessly corrupt, from top to bottom. That it is useless to resist—to care, to hope for a happier future. But there are heroes out there who refuse to go along. On this episode of PARTS UNKNOWN, we meet a few of them. People who are standing up against overwhelming odds, demanding accountability, demanding change—at great, even horrifying personal cost.
This show is for them.