Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [201]
Aside from breakfast, commendable baked goods, and inexpensive lunches served in a bare-bones coffee-shop setting (counter and booths), Gus’s is notable for its waitstaff, a team of uniformed pros who serve the food and coffee almost faster than you can speak the words to order it, and who refer to newcomers as well as friends as Hon, Sweetheart, and Doll. Last time we visited—about three years after our most recent Gus Balon’s breakfast—waitress Pat exclaimed, “You’re back!” She then recalled exactly where we had sat the last time and what we had ordered!
Joe and Aggie’s Café
120 W. Hopi Dr.
520–524–6540
Holbrook, AZ
BL | $
At the front of Joe and Aggie’s, cases and shelves display souvenirs of Route 66: playing cards, key rings, hats, and nostalgic books about the “Mother Road” that took travelers through Holbrook long before Interstate 40 bypassed the town. Despite the interstate, Holbrook remains one of those places where you can get a real feel for what life was like along western roads in the two-lane days. It still has the famous Sleep in a Wigwam motel; there are some fascinating pawnshops and Native-American jewelry emporia; and at Joe and Aggie’s you can have a real old-fashioned roadside diner meal.
Tables are outfitted with squeeze bottles of honey for squirting onto sopaipillas (puffy triangles of fried bread), and meals begin with a basket of chips and an empty bowl in which you decant some hot, pepper-flecked hot sauce for dipping. The sign on the front window boasts of Mexican and American food, but in fact, the menu at Joe and Aggie’s is not quite either; it is a blend of Mexican and American that is unique to the southwest. After the chips and salsa, you move on to such main courses as enchiladas made with red or green chile, big stuffed burritos, crisp tacos, or chicken-fried steak with potatoes and hot sopaipillas on the side. Roadfood.com user “icrmg” posted a gorgeous photo showing breakfast of green chile-topped huevos rancheros sided by a cake of hash browns and a side of cheese-dripping refried beans.
Joe and Aggie’s is the oldest restaurant in Holbrook, dating back to 1946, the year Bobby Troup headed west in his Buick convertible and wrote “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66.”
La Cabaña
840 N. Grand Ave. #12
520–287–8208
Nogales, AZ
BLD | $
Our South Arizona friend Margaret Bond took us to La Cabaña when we asked her and her husband, Paul (the estimable boot maker), where to go in Nogales to get a real local meal. Margaret walked into the inviting little cantina with us in tow and she was greeted warmly by the staff, who know her as a regular.
Hostess Lupita had a worried look on her face when we sat down around 10:30 in the morning, between breakfast and lunch. Lupita knows what Margaret likes to eat when she comes here, and she warned us, “The chiles relleños are not ready yet. Can you wait ten minutes?” For relleños like these, we are happy to wait longer than that. They are packed with deep green-chile flavor, oozing melted cheese, and enrobed in a luscious fried crust.
The meal started with made-to-order guacamole, a bowl of chunky mashed avocado mixed with little bits of cheese and tomato. Margaret advised that we might want to spruce it up with a dab of the hot salsa provided to every table, as well as a spritz of tiny Mexican limes. We also sampled steamy corn tamales, spicy enchiladas, a crisp-crusted taco, and a beef burrito filled with meat that was moist and pot-roast tender. Among the most memorable flavors on the table were the simple flour tortillas, served in a bread basket. They are suitable for mopping one’s plate of sauce and refritos, but just by themselves, these are superb tortillas: warm, delicate, with an earthy wheat flavor so rich they taste buttered.
La Cabaña is an inconspicuous little adobe restaurant/bar in a cluster of shops on the main drag. It is outfitted with tables and a couple of comfortable booths. For serious eating, we recommend the booths, where you can lounge like royalty.