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.

Taco Town in Hixson, Tennessee is definitely a “dive”, but it’s clean and friendly and the tacos that they serve are so good you really don’t care anyway.

Choosing a place to eat on Saturdays has become infinitely more complicated now that Philip is working on the weekends. He gets off at 2:30, sometimes a little later. By the time he gets home from his job in East Brainerd, we’re both pretty much ravenous (in fact, sometimes I have to break out a snack). If I don’t already have a place in mind, choosing a restaurant can be pretty stressful, and driving a long distance can cause extreme “hanger” (hunger + anger). Plus, it seems that lately every place I think of closes early on Saturdays. WHY????

Forgive me for my rabbit trail. Last week, Taco Town was on my short list, as was Bob’s Brick Oven (a pizza joint in North Georgia) and Ceniza (I will get to both of those places soon, I promise). We ended up deciding on Taco Town for no other reason than we were hungry and it was close. It was basically dead when we arrived at 4:00 p.m. We chose a seat by the window and were given menus to peruse. We both ordered waters and Philip also ordered a horchata (a spiced and sweetened rice milk drink) which was delicious and made in house, but I didn’t get a photo.

Chips and salsa were delivered to our table, as it should be in a Mexican restaurant. The chips were fresh, thin and crispy and the salsa a little chunkier than typical for a Mexican restaurant and just barely spicy. We also decided to spring for an order of queso. The queso was different than the thin, white cheese sauce with just a hint of pickled jalapeño that is typically served at Mexican restaurants. It had plenty of red and green peppers in it, so it was quite a bit spicier than the typical queso…and quite a bit more flavorful as well.



While the quesadillas, tortas, and other menu items all sounded delicious, the name of the place IS Taco Town so I felt that I had a duty to order tacos, and lot of them. After much deliberation I settled on carnitas (slow cooked shredded pork), barbacoa (slow cooked shredded beef), and al pastor (chunks of pork marinated in chilies, spices, and pineapple). Taco Town tacos are served street taco style, each in two soft flour tortillas with the meat and lots of chopped onion and cilantro – nothing else except a wedge of lime to squeeze over each taco. Somehow, even though I typically hate raw onion, I can eat it in street tacos without giving it a second though (until after we left and I realized that I was out of the mints that I usually carry). Both the carnitas and the barbacoa were unbelievably tender and well-seasoned. The al pastor was cooked perfectly and was very flavorful.

Philip was disappointed that lingua (beef tongue) tacos were not on the menu – he loves them. Don’t judge…as Andrew Zimmern once said on Bizarre Foods, tongue is like the best pot roast you’ve ever had. It’s super tender and beefy flavored. But I digress…we are not talking about tongue today. Philip ended up deciding on tacos as well and ordered one chicharron (fried pork skin), one with chicharron, chorizo, and asada (grilled steak) called campechanos, and one with just chorizo. He loved all three. He noted that the chorizo was not very greasy at all (sometimes they just drip with grease) but that it was not as spicy as the chorizo in some spots around town (he likes the spice). We were a little apprehensive about fried pork skins in tacos, since they tend to be crunchy and we wondered if that would make them difficult to eat. However, the pork skin was not crunchy, just cooked through and delicious. The carne asada was tender to the bite and flavorful.

Taco Town is a bit “dive-y” but not in an unclean or scary way. The staff was friendly (the male server who started us off seemed a little confused, but he was still nice and managed to deliver all the right items to our table). At $18.58 for a specialty drink ($2.00), queso dip $2.99), and 6 tacos ($1.99 each), the price was definitely on the money (ugh, sorry, that was a terrible pun). Since it’s not the closest, we probably won’t make a lot of trips to Taco Town, but we would definitely go back if we were in the area looking for some great tacos!

If you’re in Hixson and craving tacos, give Taco Town a try!

Taco Town is located at 4812 Hixson Pike, Suite 110, Hixson, TN 37343 (in one of the strip malls near Krystal). They are open daily from 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. You can call Taco Town at (423) 870-0909. They do not have a website or Facebook page at this time.