A couple years back, I was fortunate enough to accompany Butcher & Bee and Redheaded Stranger chef Bryan Lee Weaver on a trip to the Hatch Chili Festival for an article I was working on. While the festival was great and I drank more chili-and-passionflower margaritas and chili beers and ate more chili cheeseburgers than I can remember, the highlight of the trip was actually the couple of days we spent in El Paso before meeting up with the rest of our traveling party to continue on to New Mexico.
Weaver was in the middle of researching the authentic Western breakfast tacos that he planned to serve at his dream restaurant, which turned out to be Redheaded Stranger in Meridian Park at 305 Arrington St. We ate tacos and huevos rancheros at H&H Car Wash, a tiny taqueria that is still an operating car wash, and I recognize many of those same flavors on the menu at Red Headed Stranger. We visited several other holes in the wall where we were the only gringos ordering and where my high school Spanish came in quite handy as we ordered flautas “Christmas-style” with both red and green chili sauce.
We visited the Chamizal National Memorial, a museum dedicated to a disputed 600 acres of land on the border that resulted when the Rio Grande switched its course over years and led to both countries surveying the area and digging channels to reroute the water in an attempt to claim the patch of scrub. A summit meeting between U.S. President William Taft and Mexican President José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori in 1909 was notable in that it was the first time an American president had ever crossed the border into Mexico. (Hmm .... that somehow sounds familiar.) The summit almost resulted in the attempted assassination of both presidents on Oct. 16, 1909. The conflict was finally settled with a treaty signed by Lyndon Johnson in 1963.
We also walked to the border, and watched the traffic streaming between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, we marveled how the two cities basically represent one joint economy. That evening we attended a triple-A baseball game at the El Paso Chihuahuas stadium and again enjoyed being a part of a true melting pot of a crowd that was just there to have a great time and root their puppies to a victory. That green-chili hot dog I had at the game was pretty damned memorable, too.
So almost as soon as I heard about the tragic recent events in El Paso, I reached out to Weaver to see if he had any plans to do anything for the town. He was way ahead of me. From today, Friday, Aug. 9, through Sunday, Aug. 11, he’ll be donating a portion of the proceeds from Redheaded Stranger’s sales to the Paso Del Norte Community Foundation, which has established a victims relief fund so the donations will go directly to supporting the victims and their families in El Paso.
This also means that Redheaded Stranger has now begun service on weekends! Folks who haven’t had the chance to get away during the breakfast and lunch hours during the week can now check out the fantastic menu at Weaver’s cozy taqueria on Saturdays and Sundays from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. Go order a few tacos, one of their great breakfast burritos stuffed with eggs, crispy hash browns and chorizo or Weaver’s famous green-chili cheeseburger and help out a great cause. Chihuahua strong!
