I pull into the parking lot of Caro’s Restaurant and it’s almost empty of cars because everyone knows it will close at 3 p.m. The iconic restaurant in Rio Grande City is a staple of any visit and part of the daily lives of residents. You can’t go to Rio without stopping at Caro’s. You can’t live in Rio without being a regular at Caro’s.
I’m taking a late lunch, so I step into the spacious diner made still and quiet by the mid-afternoon doldrums. I take the closest table and a waitress immediately comes to my table with a menu. She’s pleasant, fresh, with a rose on her shirt conveying warmth. She brings me my coffee and it’s a fine coffee, and tortilla chips with salsa and it’s good too, but I run my eyes over the menu and can’t find that which I have longed for: “Puffy tacos.”
“Where are the puffy tacos?” I ask, and she quickly directs me to a menu item with three puffy tacos and beans and rice, and of course it was right there in front of me if I’d just looked. So I give her my order and soak in my surroundings.
I have been here many times. A journal entry from 2003 describes long red brick walls and shuttered windows, square tables against the walls with plastic red and white tablecloths beneath plexiglass and slanting white ceiling.
But I see no red brick walls and shuttered windows and tables with plastic covers beneath plexiglass because that was the old restaurant. But in the same entry from the old restaurant, the owner tells a story that still resonates almost 20 years later.
“We’ve been here since 1937. We’ve been serving the same food,” the owner at the time said. “We haven’t changed any of the recipes. That’s pretty much the secret.”
I was in the old restaurant many times, and the new restaurant, but I’ve never seen either one through the eyes I use now. It was years ago, and so many things since have come together to grind a finer lens through which I view life.
The chaos and insanities of life can tear your insides apart and you’re left picking up the pieces and putting them back together in shapes and patterns previously unknown, and it can be a greater thing or a lesser thing from what you had before, depending on your commitment to the thing.
Not an easy task.
But I sit here in Caro’s on a Saturday afternoon and know the journey I’ve made here has been a good one, because there is no finer thing in life than the smell of coffee and the murmuring voices and the clatter of plates and the aroma of puffy tacos surrounding you in a grand simplicity of sensations.
I look at the deer heads that seem to keep watch over the two other families engaged in their own mid-afternoon meal. The young family in front of me moves through their dinner amid the playful intrigue of small talk.
A strong tenor leads an accordion through a song rolling through the diner while the teenage girls in front of me play a sort of game of musical chairs between bites of food and toying with a straw and the mandatory check of the cellphone and the latest drama at school.
The waitress sets my plate before me: three puffy tacos. I dive into a sort of culinary nostalgia, a fine memory of years ago transfigured into the meal on my plate.
The thick puffy tacos, a trademark of this fine place, seem to wrap their thick arms around the meat and vegetables that come together into the same fine tapestry of taste I remember, but fresh and new for the rediscovery of it all and the way it satisfies the drought of hunger and the staleness of things.
In the evening as the Starr County sun settles over the rolling hills of brasil bush and mesquite and cactus I return for dinner. The locals have filled the dining room with the warmth and intimacy of a family gathering at a restaurant that has such permanency it serves well the purpose of the home-cooked meal.
Families fill the evening with flourishes and embellishments of conversation excited for the thrill of an evening out at a place at once exciting and recognizable for the consistency of it all.
I take the same table from earlier in the day. A robust waiter stops short as he approaches, grabs a rag and a squirt bottle, and quickly wipes it clean. I want something different, and upon the suggestion of a friend I ask about the chicken fajitas.
As if plugging into an automatic memory he rattles off the list of items that comes with the order: guacamole, tostadas, salsa, corn tortillas. He takes the order, brings me a tall glass of water, and I absorb more fully the nuances of an evening at Caro’s.
There’s an elegant bar along one side of the dining room with big screens showing football games, but no one seems to be watching. They’re more interested in the man in a thick gray beard making quick gestures of his hands to emphasize his narrative, the young girl fidgeting in her chair, the steaks and enchiladas and chuck burgers waiting anxiously for their fates.
An old man with the unmistakable lilt of South Texas Tejano in his voice speaks to friends at the next table, the sliding rise and fall of his speech suddenly shifting gear into the staccato Spanish elegant for its earthiness.
The waiter brings my food now, a plate of sizzling chicken fajitas with grilled onions and green peppers and a mound of sweet guacamole. I eat slowly, meticulously to enjoy the full experience. It’s a fine conclusion to my Starr County trip before returning to the Lower Valley.
