Mamacita’s – San Marcos, TX: We drove an hour and a half for cheese and shit got real



For our fifteenth (FIFTEENTH!) queso critique, my same-named cheese friend Amanda and I made the hour-and-a-half journey to San Marcos, Texas, where I lived during graduate school. Just for the record, the main purpose of this roadtrip was to donate our old prom dresses, and we simply decided to squeeze in a new queso while we were there.

It won’t surprise me if we eventually drive that distance JUST for cheese, though.

Mamacita’s was one of my favorite restaurants when I lived in San Marcos, so I couldn’t help but feel a touch of nostalgia as we were seated. The menu offers a whopping four different quesos, three of which are the “broiled” kind that Amanda and I have come to love so much.

We easily picked the Queso Chihuahua Flameado, which featured white cheese melted together with green poblano peppers and bacon, and served with homemade flour tortillas. Being the sophisticated person I am, I refrained from ordering the dish as “the queso made from tiny dogs.”

When the waitress brought out the food, we were a bit puzzled when she didn’t put it on our table right away – until we realized that, for the first time ever, we were going to witness our Queso Flameado with…well, flames. We stared at our flaming cheese with child-like awe.

Even after the fire died down, the queso and its tortilla sidekicks were still lookin’ mighty attractive. If we awarded points based on physical appearance alone, this one would definitely rank high.

After a quick demonstration by our waitress on how to more efficiently coerce the cheese into their floury vessels (a lesson that Amanda eloquently summarized as, “do it twirly with two forks”), we dug into our meal.

Where do I even begin with this delicious beauty? Right away, we noticed that there was absolutely no grease, which is truly an impressive accomplishment when you’re dealing with a pile of melted cheese and meat. It lacked the “charred” flavor that we’re used to with broiled quesos, but we found that the lack of char allowed us to taste the actual ingredients better.

The dish was not at all spicy (which we normally deduct points over), but the strong flavors of the cheese, bacon, and poblano peppers were so mouth-watering on their own, we didn’t even miss the zing.

It should also be mentioned that Amanda and I fell deeply in love with Mamacita’s kick-ass, super-soft, thick flour tortillas. My God, you guys. Our focus is usually on the queso itself, and not so much on the chips or tortillas it’s served with, but, as Amanda so beautifully put it, “the vessel does affect the judgment of the cheese.”

In a previous post, I mentioned our hypothesis that cheese can serve as a sedative when you’re frazzled. This time, however, we got so excited about our melty-bacony-peppery cheese, that the enthusiasm short-circuited our brains, and caused us to clap our hands and bounce in our seats like total weirdos. And we weren’t even drinking. It was all cheese love.

You’d feel a little keyed up too, if you had this baby coming atcha.

And that’s how we came to invent Cheese Therapy.

Under this therapeutic model, we will feed the dairy delight to our counseling clients, and it will either calm them or energize them, depending on their needs. The cheese will “meet them where they are” – just like regular therapy is supposed to do. Brené Brown can keep her inspiring discussions about vulnerability and authenticity – as long as she stays out of our Cheese Therapy.

All factors considered, we awarded the Queso Chihuahua Flameado a well-deserving 9.5 (Revised: 4.5), putting it in a cut-throat tie with Sazón.

Criteria for judging queso

Mamacita’s website