Last night brought back an unexpected happy memory from my childhood.<\/p>\n
I grew up in the Kingwood area of Little Rock. In the early 1980s, when we wanted something good to eat, we\u2019d go to \u201cthe top of the hill.\u201d That was the section of Cantrell Road bounded by North McKinley Street to the east, stretching through the intersection at Mississippi Avenue all the way west to Foxcroft Road.<\/p>\n
The top of the hill was lined with restaurants. Whatever type of food you were hungry for, you\u2019d likely find it on that stretch of Cantrell.<\/p>\n
Including Mexican. Specifically, Taco Kid at the corner of Cantrell and Kingsrow.<\/p>\n
Now, Taco Kid wasn\u2019t the BEST Mexican restaurant in Little Rock. That honor went to Casa Bonita several miles to the south, with its strolling guitar player and prize room for kids and its all-you-can-eat deluxe dinners.<\/p>\n
But Taco Kid was quite good. It appealed to a younger audience. Taco Kid had a rockin\u2019 jukebox. \u201cBurn Rubber\u201d by The Gap Band and \u201cUptown Girl\u201d by Billy Joel are two songs I distinctly remember hearing for the first time there.<\/p>\n
Taco Kid also appealed to the younger crowd by serving (as the local arts & entertainment paper put it) big ol\u2019 plates of brown-and-yellow food at reasonable prices. For $3.95 you could get a beef enchilada in red sauce, a cheese enchilada in chili con carne, a taco, rice, and beans.<\/p>\n
The REAL reason to go to Taco Kid, though, was what you ate while waiting for your dinner to come out: Tasty cheese dip, golden in color. There were no bits of peppers or onions or tomatoes in the cheese dip; it didn\u2019t need them. The \u201cchips\u201d for dipping were nothing but taco shells cut in half. Totally unpretentious. Also, totally delicious.<\/p>\n
Taco Kid closed around 1985, probably the victim of fast-food chain Taco Bell which had entered the Little Rock market.\u00a0 <\/span>Ever since then, I\u2019ve tried to find cheese dip that approximates Taco Kid\u2019s.<\/p>\n I sure haven\u2019t found it in Memphis. Not until yesterday.<\/p>\n The problem is that most Mexican restaurants in the Memphis metro are owned by actual Mexicans. They serve cheese dip as they knew it growing up – white queso, bland and flavorless. To get any kind of yellow cheese dip, I have to go to chain restaurants like On the Border, and their stuff doesn\u2019t hold a candle to my memories of Taco Kid.<\/p>\n I think it\u2019s that Memphis is too far removed from Texas, yellow queso being more of a Tex-Mex thing. Little Rock is two hours closer to Texas, so Tex-Mex food is more prevalent there. I bet there\u2019s excellent yellow queso everywhere in Dallas or Houston or San Antonio – but I have no interest in visiting those cities because they\u2019re in Texas, and therefore they suck.<\/p>\n So anyway, last night was my friend Neal\u2019s 60th birthday party at Pretty Taco. Pretty Taco is a relatively new Mexican restaurant at the corner of Front and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. They\u2019re known for many different types of tacos and for staying open late with a nightclub vibe on the weekends.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t get to try any of the on-menu items last night. Being the host with the most that Neal is, he arranged for a build-your-own taco bar to ensure no guest would go hungry.<\/p>\n I had just had 3 sliders at Bardog. Also, I had on a Lansky sport shirt that you have to hand-wash. \u201cIf a taco breaks apart and gets on this shirt, that\u2019s going to be a total pain to wash out,\u201d I thought.<\/p>\n So I decided to skip the tacos and just eat some chips and cheese dip.<\/p>\n The queso was a lovely shade of golden yellow.<\/p>\n I took a bite.<\/p>\n That FLAVOR!!! I was instantly taken back 40 years. I can\u2019t say for sure that was the exact recipe Taco Kid used, but it\u2019s really close. DO NOT MISS OUT on the cheese dip there!!!<\/p>\n There was a lot to love about Pretty Taco. It\u2019s a big, open space with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out upon Downtown. Halsey Werlein, for years the GM at Silly Goose, operates Pretty Taco. I\u2019ve been told a lot of the Taco\u2019s crowd are people who hung out at the Goose prior to the pandemic. That seems pretty consistent with the people I saw there last night. Fun crowd, indeed.<\/p>\n Thanks to Neal for the invite, and to my newly-married friends Luke and Sheryll for letting me hang out with them for much of the evening. The atmosphere reminded me of a really awesome high school prom.<\/p>\n On to the rest of the news…<\/p>\n The DM has a look back at Edge Motorfest<\/a>, which happened yesterday.<\/p>\n It’s National Red Wine Day<\/a>.<\/p>\n A man was assaulted<\/a> on the east end of the Beale Street entertainment district at about 3:00 this morning. He’s in Regional One in critical condition.<\/p>\n Three men were caught with burglary tools<\/a> on the fourth floor of the Parking Can Be Fun garage Friday just after midnight. Police also found a gun and some weed.<\/p>\n The next total eclipse of the sun will be on April 8. The Eclipse Company<\/a> has everything you need to know.<\/p>\n Elmwood Cemetery will show the movie Psycho<\/a> at 6 PM Friday. Tickets are $15.<\/p>\n The Metal Museum will hold Repair Days<\/a> Thursday through Sunday. Bring your metal items for the museum’s metalsmiths to restore.<\/p>\n There will be a beginner cha cha class<\/a> at Fourth Bluff on Saturday from 6 to 7 PM.<\/p>\n That’s it for today. Probably back tomorrow with more news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last night brought back an unexpected happy memory from my childhood. I grew up in the Kingwood area of Little Rock. In the early 1980s, when we wanted something good to eat, we\u2019d go to \u201cthe top of the hill.\u201d That was the section of Cantrell Road bounded by North McKinley Street to the east, … Continue reading “Yellow cheese dip and more Sunday news”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27137"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27138,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27137\/revisions\/27138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}