Chacho’s and Chalucci’s – San Antonion, TX

After a long day of golfing and toobing, we needed some serious food. DeliveryBoy and Amanda Hugginkiss kept talking about this place referred to as a “Mexican DisneyLand.” I wasn’t even sure what to expect with that description, but when they started talking about it and describing it, I understood pretty quickly. It’s a giant restaurant open 24 hours and it contains a Mexican food area, a pizza area, a variety of drinking areas, a multistory kids play place, a video game room, live bands, a stage for and half a billion other things that I can’t even remember. It also has four drive-through lanes if you can’t find a couple hours to kill inside, but you have to have 13 different salsas delivered to your car window.

We went inside, and I’m glad Coach and I had them with us to explain everything. It’s got a very unique layout. They put laminated menus in between the dining area and ordering areas. You scour the menu, make up your mind and then head to whichever place is likely to take your order. I ordered a Carne Guisada Burrito (only a half a burrito, actually, since I heard they were enormous and I wanted to try a couple things), and a Spicy Shredded Pork Gordita. I also ordered a strawberry margarita. I’m not normally a fan, but everyone else seemed to be doing it, so I joined in the fun. They have ice machines with margarita mix in them, so it comes out pretty fast. I’m not a fan of the blended kind usually, but this was fine.

DeliveryBoy grabbed 5 different salsas and some chips and brought them to our table. We had mango salsa, habanero salsa, some green tomatillo salsa, regular red salsa, and some pico de gallo. All of the salsas were pretty good. The habanero was really good and then quickly grew with the firey heat. REALLY hot. But I had to intersperse bites of the habanero one with the others just so I could retain my taste buds.

We also got Coach to maintain his hilarious buzz by getting him a strawberry margarita as well. When he got towards the bottom, he said, “is there tequila in this? It tastes really strong (sluuuuurppppp).” He was able to maintain the buzz and subsequent hilarity, thankfully.

My buzzer went off and I had to ask DeliveryBoy where to go pick up my food. Once I found it, I brought it back and looked at this appetizing platter of food.

I dove into the carne guisada burrito first. It was really flavorful. I was unsure if the food here would be authentic, since it did kind of have a carnival-like atmosphere, but it lived up to all the hype my nephew built up. It was quite good in fact. Lots of cheese and pork in this thing. There were some peppers, tomatoes, and some guacamole inside as well. It was a forking kind of burrito, not a hands kind of burrito. The spicy shredded pork gordita was good, but not fantastic. Maybe I burned out my taste buds on the habanero salsa, but the pork really wasn’t all that spicy. It was good, but it wasn’t spicy. Kind of a taco inside a tortilla, eaten pita bread-style. Maybe I should have added the habanero salsa to the gordita to spice it up, but I didn’t think about it at the time.

None of us were hungry enough to go back for pizza or any additional items, but I’m guessing if I had ordered some smaller items, I might have been able to do it. Oh well. I was curious how San Antonio pizza compared to Chicago pizza. Maybe next time, I’ll find out.

Chacho’s and Chalucci’s is a fun place with really good Mexican food. I’d go back here again, maybe to catch a live salsa band or something and have some pizza. But I’ll probably try to get a margarita on the rocks next time. There’s less chance of brain freeze that way.

Top 5 things about Chacho’s and Chalucci’s
1. Carne Guisada Burrito
2. Habanero salsa
3. Mango salsa
4. An evening’s worth of entertainment in one place – I’m guessing they do a pretty good business here
5. Spicy Shredded Pork Gordita

Bottom 5 things
1. Gerd loved Mexican food and I’m guessing having all her favorite foods under one roof along with drinks would have blown her mind
2. I think I might have blown out my taste buds with the habanero salsa, even though it was awesome
3. Would rather have rocks than crushed margaritas
4. It does get loud in here
5. Seeing a lot of parents dropping their kids off at the play place and then getting hammered in the bar

www.chachos.com