El Maguey Mexican restaurant opened in 2016 and is located in the Middle Valley area of Hixson, Tennessee. They serve local Mexican restaurant standards.

Have you ever had a restaurant that you drove by all the time but you, for whatever reason, never even really thought about stopping? I don’t know why, but for some reason that’s been my experience with El Maguey. It’s been open for several months now and I’ve heard only good things about it. I drive by there several times a week, whether for work or just to try to avoid Hixson Pike…but for some reason we just haven’t made it there.

I finally decided that we needed to make the effort to stop in after seeing several friends post about it. We stopped in at around 6 p.m. on a Wednesday night, and while there was a pretty good crowd we were seated immediately. It’s a very nice space, located near the Save-A-Lot on Middle Valley Road (I can’t remember for the life of me what was located there before) and decorated tastefully. Our server grabbed our waters and we ordered a queso fundido ($4.99). Unfortunately, there was some sort of mix-up and we did not get our queso fundido. Since it would have taken a while to make once the mix-up was realized, our server brought us an order of regular cheese dip on the house. It was good cheese dip, pretty much par for the course as far as cheese dip goes. The chips and salsa were good as well. They bring out separate bowls for everyone at the table, which you probably appreciate if you like to double dip.

I decided to order the flautas ($7.50) with shredded beef. For those of you who are not familiar with flautas, they are tortillas rolled around some sort of meat and fried. The flautas at El Maguey are served with lettuce, tomato, sour cream, and rice. The meat was well-seasoned and tender, like a very slow-cooked roast, shredded very finely. The tortillas as well as the ends of the meat were crispy and delicious. I enjoyed the rice as well – it was just rice with flavorings, no additional vegetables, and it was very flavorful and well-cooked.

Philip was going to go with his standard Mexican restaurant order (chimichanga with ground beef) but at our server’s urging decided to go instead with alambre ($10.99), a choice of chicken or steak (Philip got both) cooked with onions and bacon and topped with cheese. The alambre was served with rice, beans, flour tortillas, and salsa verde. The meat was delicious – Philip compared it to a Philly cheesesteak with chicken and bacon added. He also enjoyed the rice and the beans, and said that the salsa verde did not have much flavor to him. I tasted some on a chip and thought it was mostly tart and just a little spicy – not a lot of tomatillo or chile flavor. The portion of this meal was huge and Philip brought half of it home to eat for lunch the next day.


So…was El Maguey a standout among local Mexican restaurants? Well, I didn’t think it was better than Delia’s, but it was as good as El Metate. It’s a little bit closer to our house than either one, so I am sure that we’ll go back when a taco craving strikes (as they often do). If you live in the Hixson/Middle Valley area, you should definitely give El Maguey a try!

El Maguey is located at 7001 Middle Valley Road, Hixson, TN 37343. They are open Monday – Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday. 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. You can call them at 423-475-5763. For more information, you can check out El Maguey’s website or like El Maguey on Facebook.

 

Fiesta Mexicana is a Mexican restaurant located in Hixson, Tennessee. They offer standard Mexican fare in a nice, spacious environment.

So, Chattanooga had a mini snowpocalypse last weekend. Okay, not really. Did we even get an inch? I’m not sure…pretty sure not. What I do know is that by the time I got out of the house to meet my friend Becky for coffee that the roads were completely fine. You won’t hear me complain about the snow day I got on Friday, though. I❤️snow days.

It was brutally cold in Chattanooga, though. The temps were in the twenties during the day, and the wind chill even lower. Us southerners are not build for cold weather, so we decided to avoid any restaurants that required much walking. Instead, we headed to Hixson for Mexican food at Fiesta Mexicana.

I am not certain, but I think that Fiesta Mexicana may be related in some way to El Sol, which was formerly located in a building near where Fiesta Mexicana (which used to be a bar/tavern type restaurant) is currently located. Fiesta Mexicana is in a much bigger space – it’s quite a large space with two separate dining areas and a bar. We arrived around 4:00 on Saturday afternoon and were seated quickly. There were several tables occupied but it was not crowded. The chips and salsa were quickly delivered to our table, with a bowl of salsa for each of us.

Unfortunately, I did not get our server’s name. Usually, it’s printed on the receipt, so if I forget to ask, I have a fallback, but in this case it was not. Sorry about that. She was very nice, though, and quickly stopped by our table to get our drink order. When she returned with our waters, we asked for some cheese dip. Apparently, she felt that she took too long to get the cheese dip to us, because she apologized for not bringing it sooner and comped it on our bill. We didn’t think anything about it, but we were certainly appreciative.

The chips and salsa were pretty standard Mexican restaurant chips and salsa – thin and crispy chips and just slightly spicy red salsa. The salsa was a little bit less chunky than what I typically expect in a Mexican restaurant, but I like my salsa pretty chunk-less so I was okay with that! I didn’t take a picture of the cheese dip, but it was also pretty standard – thin, white cheese dip with jalapeños. It satisfied my cheese dip craving.

Lunch specials are available until 3:00, so we were not able to get any of those. I was torn between the taquitos dinner special and the flautas dinner special. Taquitos and flautas are very similar, but taquitos are made with corn tortillas and flautas are made with flour tortillas. I decided on the flautas luxe, since (1) I was getting crispy corn tortillas in the chips; and (2) the flautas luxe provided a variety of fillings: ground beef, steak, and chicken. They were served with lettuce, tomato, cheese, sour cream, and guacamole. The tortillas were fried until lightly crispy (more so around the edges, which are my favorite part) and stuffed with seasoned meat. The steak was my favorite, though the chicken and ground beef were good as well. The steak and ground beef tasted like they had similar seasoning. I would order this again.

Philip went for his standard Mexican order: a ground beef chimichanga. His chimichanga was topped with cheese sauce and served with beans and rice, lettuce, sour cream, guacamole, and pico de gallo. He said that the beans and rice were good but not his favorite (I would still say that Delia’s has the best Mexican rice and refried beans are our favorite). The chimichanga was very large. He said it was well-cooked and he liked the ground beef seasoning. He stopped about 2/3 of the way though so that he wouldn’t get overstuffed.

If our server had not taken off the cheese dip, our meal would have been around $24 pre-tip. Not a bad price for such a large meal. The atmosphere at Fiesta Mexicana is nice – everything is nicely decorated in a pretty traditional Mexican restaurant type decor. The food was good as well, pretty much standard Americanized Mexican fare. I’m not complaining about that – it tastes good and I would go back.

Fiesta Mexicana is located at 4021 Hixson Pike, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 37415. They are open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday – Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sunday. You can call them at (423) 877-2879. They do not have a website, but you can find more information on the Fiesta Mexicana Hixson Facebook page. You can find photos that a Yelp user shared of the Fiesta Mexicana menu here.