Las Cazuelas

Our first meal on our Vegas trip (one year ago today) was at Las Cazuelas, a Mexican restaurant in Henderson. We were going for a bit of a later lunch after trading in our rental car (really didn't want to drive a minivan (our only choice when we arrived) around the whole time) and before driving out to Hoover Dam. Henderson seemed like the perfect stopping point for us to grab some Mexican food.

Las Cazuelas is a small and cozy family-run restaurant - only a few tables indoors but more outside. We ordered at the counter and then they brought the food out to us as it was ready. We loved how informal, friendly and casual it was, and the people running it were so nice. They specialize in food from Puebla. We can get some of that at home, but haven't found most of the things we got at this lunch, so it was wonderful to explore.

The first thing to arrive at our table was complimentary chips and salsa. The salsa was pretty good, and this was a good snack as we waited for them to prepare our other dishes.

We got a bunch of dishes to share, focusing mostly on things that were new to us or that were difficult to find back in NYC. We ordered:

Enchiladas de mole poblano (shredded chicken rolled in corn tortillas, covered with mole poblano and topped with cotija cheese, white onion and roasted sesame seeds):

How could we go to a restaurant specializing in food from Puebla and not get mole poblano? Although this wasn't our favorite mole preparation ever, we enjoyed it and it was really tasty. You could taste the chocolate and cinnamon in the mole, and there was a definite sweetness. Our favorite is still probably the mole we got in Los Angeles, but this was quite good. We really liked the sweet and complex flavors.

Chanclas (sliced roll bread, stuffed with shredded chicken, avocados and onions, and a mild spicy chorizo sauce drizzled over the top):

These were interesting and not at all what we were expecting. We figured they would just be sliders with some sauce on top like the menu said. Instead they were soaking in the chorizo sauce, which made this a very messy dish. We did like the flavor of the sauce though and it was probably the best part of the dish. It tasted tomato-based and we would eat that sauce over pasta or another starch any day. A didn't get a huge amount of chorizo flavor, though.

As for the rest of the sandwich, A found the chicken to be very moist, while the chicken M got was a little bit stringy. The avocado added texture but not much flavor, since the sauce was pretty dominant. This was a really interesting choice and we were glad we tried it.

Pelonas (2 fried rolls with a touch of olive oil, stuffed with shredded beef and refried beans, cream and spicy mild sauce):

We had never had pelonas before but they looked just like sliders and the "dry" counterpart to chanclas. These were good, but not amazing. The sliders tasted buttery from the griddled rolls. The meat was shredded beef, but you couldn't really tell from the flavor. It just tasted like meat. M found the meat to be a little chewy; it probably was supposed to be that texture but that's why she doesn't eat that much shredded beef. The slaw on it was pretty good and the creamy mayo-like sauce was good too.

Frijoles charros (pinto beans stewed with onion, bacon, chili peppers, tomatoes, cilantro, ham, sausage and chorizo), which unexpectedly (in a good way) came as a side dish to the pelonas:

This bean preparation was interesting and something that neither of us had seen in a Mexican restaurant before. It was on the watery side, but very tasty and one of our favorite things that we ate at lunch. You could taste a strong bacon flavor and there were also some hot dog-like sausage pieces mixed in. The beans tasted like they had been stewed for a while with lots of herbs, and they just had so much flavor. This was a really great surprise.

Taco arabe (seasoned pork meat with onions and parsley on a flour tortilla, served with special hot spicy sauce):

The single taco arabe that we ordered was our favorite part of our lunch and if we hadn't ordered so much other food, we might have gone back up to get another one. Tacos arabes (literally, Arab tacos) have an interesting history and can trace their lineage back to Lebanese and/or Iraqi (depending on who you ask) immigrants to Puebla back in the 1930s. As a result, the spice combinations used to make tacos arabes are really complex and so different from so much other Mexican food, and the tacos pick up some great aspects of both cuisines.

The chicken was really juicy and was covered in a zesty spicy sauce. This was just an intense blast of seasoning and we really loved it. There are a couple of places here in Queens that do have tacos arabes, and we loved this one so much that we want to go see how those measure up.

Overall we had a good lunch at Las Cazuelas. It was a bit out of the way from where we were staying, so we're glad we had the opportunity to try it on our way out to the dam. Great start to our Las Vegas eats!

Las Cazuelas is located at 9711 S. Eastern Ave near Target.