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Mom's Recipes Translate Into Texan Just Fine

By Dale Rice
American-Statesman Restaurant Critic
Friday, October 24, 2003

Gloria Cantu was living comfortably in Mexico, periodically visiting her grown children, who all lived in Austin.

On one of those visits here, Cantu, who had operated an interior Mexican restaurant in Chicago for a decade beginning in the late 1960s, was looking through the classified ads when the bug bit her again: taco stand for sale.

Photo by Kelly West/AA-S

Gloria Cantu with her avocado chicken enchiladas at Las Palmas Mexican Restaurant.

There went the easy life.

She bought the stand and was "doing real good" about a year later when she happened to drive past a vacant eatery for rent on East Seventh Street.

"Before you know it, we had the restaurant," she says.

Clearly she's a glutton for hard work.

And good food.

Using the techniques her mother taught her growing up in the small town of Zaragoza in Coahuila state, Cantu is turning out some of the best enchiladas in town.

Her chicken enchiladas with avocado sauce are one of the best selling points for Las Palmas, enticing many diners back repeatedly in the year and a half the restaurant has been open.

To make the enchiladas, Cantu cooks, seasons and shreds chicken, which she rolls in tortillas. For the sauce, she combines avocado, jalape�os, cilantro and chicken broth.

The result is a delicious pairing of chicken and a sauce that has a nice little zing. Using the same chicken base, she also produces tasty enchiladas with a green sauce and a fresh tomato sauce (the entomatadas).

Her favorite is cheese enchiladas topped with a roja sauce made with chile peppers.

All are based on recipes she learned as a child in her mother's kitchen.

And to keep it in the family, daughters Monica Cantu, Caroline Galvan and Liz-Margot Chandler are working with their mom on this enterprise.

They may experiment with other dishes, but they don't mess with the enchiladas. Try that, Monica laughs, and her mom will shout, "It's my kitchen; just stay away from it."

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