El Pocito — Restaurant in McAllen

Ok so I looked this place up here in Yelp and I don't feel that the reviews pay homage to the actual historic place we have here at home.

When I walk up to the place, I'm immediately taken back 35-40 years to the tortillerías I used to visit as a child in Mexico. The smell of freshly cooked tortillas hit you a few yards before getting to the door. Old-school screens on the door and windows allow the rich aroma of tortillas and beans to permeate the surrounding air.

The griddles are hot and the long time chefs are busy cooking tortillas and gorditas for pending orders. The menus is simple and the prices are good. Now, you might be tempted to ask, "what's the big deal, it's the same breakfast as other places?" The big deal is the food is fresh. The bigger deal, is that they ground the maíz and do the nixtamalization process all in-house; making the corn tortillas as fresh and natural as possible.

For the lovers of flour tortillas....those are good too. Made fresh when you order; or...if you take flour tortillas home, they hold up well for a couple of days in the fridge. Don't buy too many and not eat them right away, there are no preservatives so they won't be as fluffy or as good as when they are fresh. That is expected from fresh foods like that; the same thing happens with Breadsmith bread, it's great, it just doesn't keep a long time like store bought prepackaged tortillas/bread.

Now, El Pocito has been around for over 100 years; even surviving the pandemic. The head chef has been there over 30. The prices are good. The food is good. The process is traditional and the tortillas are great!

Let's all visit El Pocito for some tacos and gorditas. Let's keep them around another 100 years.

Oh and it's cash only and they are closed Sundays.

We'll...

This town’s best kept secret, till now! This humble hidden gem that offers a slight blast from my past is situated in the alley between two busy streets in our downtown area. It is not a sit down type of restaurant. In fact, there isn’t even any parking. You need to be creative with making room to park your car and walk in to place your ‘to go’ order. The small staff of maybe five workers are clearly very organized with their structure. You see one lady manning the gorditas station while the other one is manning the tortillas de harina station. They each knead and roll their dough with their hard working hands and they then place it onto the large griddle. It’s truly a work of art right before your eyes! If you order masa to go, you will get to witness first hand, how they grind the maíz right in front of you. Great field trip for those who want to see how our traditional gorditas and tortillas de harina are made. Now for the food. Their menu is very limited. However, it’s all you need. The gorditas I order happen to be the best ones I’ve had...

The food is definitely hot when served. I loved this! I got 1 gordita de Picadillo, 1 of carne guisada and my sister got 1 chicharon and 1 of puero Salsa roja.

First the godita was tasty, but the picadillo is not what I expected. Picadillo usually is like a guisado ground beef with spices and pieces of potatoe. Their picadillo is plain ground beef with no spices or gravy with boiled pieces of potatoe. The carne guisada really had not taste. The taste of the corn gordita overpowered the carne guisada.

My sister liked her chicharon, it had a different taste than what she is used to but it's okay. She definitely didn't like the puerco en salsa Roja. The ingredients they use is not what she likes on this type of guiso. I guess you can say WE ARE TEX/MEX, and I prefer this style of food preparation. It's not to say I won't come back for a...