Dallas Food - More Lamb Barbacoa

Mr. Sanchez used to operate a print shop in southeast Dallas. But, as retirement age approached, he decided to convert the building to a weekend-only restaurant, with the primary aim of bringing Hidalgo-style lamb barbacoa to Dallas. A little over a week ago, a small group of us visited Sanchez Panaderia and Taqueria for a barbacoa binge. On to the food...

Sanchez’s is located at 6131 Lake June Place, just off Highway 175. With garages and residences along the shady street, this is no restaurant row. But, on this Saturday afternoon, the numerous cars in front of the restaurant (and along the street in either direction) indicated that the place has a following.

The parking lot avifauna was unusually rich. It was hard to get good pictures, as these birds were extremely wary. But they had nothing to fear, since there was bigger game just a stone’s throw away.

Entering the restaurant, we passed the kitchen, where two young ladies were busily making tortillas. I believe we were told the tortillas were made from reconstituted masa harina (instead of freshly made masa). But they were a big step up from the bagged tortillas served in most Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants in Dallas.

Menu offerings were fairly limited, since this is essentially a barbacoa shop. In addition to the lamb barbacoa, there were a couple of by-product dishes. One was lamb consommé. The other was pancita, which was a learning experience for many of us.

Several people ordered the lamb consommé. This consisted of a cleanly flavored lamb broth with chickpeas and rice. Some spruced it up with lime and cilantro, while others enjoyed it untouched. Everyone seemed to enjoy it.

After the soups were cleared, the tables were presented with two large chafing dishes--one filled with barbacoa, the other (pictured above) with barbacoa and pancita.

The lamb had excellent flavor and no gaminess. A fork sufficed to pull the chunks of meat apart for tacos. Typical garnishes were on the table--lime, cilantro, onion, and a very peppy chile de arbol salsa. There’s not much more I can say, but that this is the kind of dish an optimistic food explorer dreams of finding when he walks into a new hole-in-the-wall. Really good stuff.

The pancita was...well, less accessible. Methods of making this dish vary. But, basically, it involves the lamb’s stomach. Sometimes it’s stuffed with meat, offal, and chiles and cooked as a bundle. Sometimes the stomach is minced with the chiles and other offal and served like a loose sausage. Reactions around the table varied. One person commented, with an approving tone, that “It’s like a Mexican haggis!” That pretty much says it all. If you’re on the haggis wavelength--and this may have as much to do with your instinctive reaction to the word “haggis” as it does any actual experience with the “great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race”--then you might appreciate pancita. Not that the two dishes taste the same. (The pancita had a smoky, blazing heat from the chiles, for starters.) But they require a similar mindset and palate. And, in the case of our tables, that would be a minority mindset and palate. Not one for the unadventurous.

We also ordered two types of gordita to share: nopales and rajas; and rajas and cheese. Both were good. But they were outshone by the barbacoa and consommé.

After the meal, we were given a little tour of the facilities and an opportunity to pepper Mr. Sanchez with questions.

One that I don’t think we got answered (but, in retrospect, I wish we had) was, “Where do you get your chiles?” The guajillos we saw simmering in a stockpot and the moritas in the pancita looked much, much better than the dried chiles I see at most local Mexican markets.

We watched sweet potatoes rolling in boiling sugar syrup over a large gas burner. The candying process involves three stages of boiling (with cooling phases in between) over many hours. When completed, the candied sweet potatoes were to be mashed for a filling in empanadas.

The highlight of the tour was the description of the process and equipment used for the barbacoa. It all starts with the cara negra sheep, which Mr. Sanchez informed us is the best and only proper breed for making Hidalgo-style barbacoa. He gets his supply from a breeder near San Angelo. (If you’re squeamish, don’t look at the raw ingredient.)

The carcasses are wrapped in large maguey leaves before going into the oven. The leaves have a thin, parchment-like coating that contributes to the flavor of the barbacoa. That thin layer is also used to wrap meats and chiles for steaming as mixiotes. And, Mr. Sanchez informed us, a straw of the coating is inserted in pulque to retard its fermentation. (Failure to do so results in popped corks or burst barrels.)

Next, he showed us the oven. The large, gas-powered, steel contraption contains brackets for the perforated racks in which the lambs are placed. Up to ten lambs can be cooked in the oven at once. Some water is poured in a trough at the bottom of the oven. Rice and chickpeas are added to the water. Steam works from below to keep the meat moist. Then, from above, each rack of meat is being basted by the drippings from the racks above it. When the drippings reach the trough at the bottom, voila! Consommé. An ingenious system that produces delicious results.

The original plan was to hit several restaurants in a row that serve mutton or lamb barbacoa. By the time we polished off the last of the barbacoa and tortillas, we were struggling to crawl back to our cars. But I think I can safely say that everyone thoroughly enjoyed the food and hospitality at Sanches Panaderia and Taqueria. Our thanks to Mr. Sanchez for doing something special and for letting us see how it’s done.