Texas Lil's

Texas Lil's
28495 Old Town Front St
Temecula, CA 92590

The other day, before going wine tasting in Temecula with my friends Zach and Elizabeth, I suggested we start out with an early lunch. Almost exactly one year earlier we had gone tasting together, along with Zach's brother Tyler, and we didn't eat first. It wasn't pretty. (We had stopped at one last winery on our way out of town only to discover that the tasting consisted of nine wines. We immediately headed to In-n-Out after that and destroyed some double-doubles.)

Since we had just eaten barbecue for dinner about 14 hours earlier, I suggested... well, more barbecue. I'm not sure I could ever get sick of eating barbecue. On a Memphis trip a few years back I ate it for every meal except two: a deep-fried burger at Dyer's, and some kind of chicken pita sandwich at a cafe by the river. (My friend Dave and I were going to go back for another deep fried burger, but our friend Min convinced us we should eat at least one healthy meal during the weekend.)

Last fall we had gone to Sweet Lumpy's in Temecula, but it appears to be closed now, so we went to Texas Lil's. It's basically a bar that serves food. (This is in no way a complaint.) We grabbed a booth inside by a window and contemplated our orders.

Elizabeth got the steak sandwich: skirt steak on garlic cheese toast, served with a giant onion ring on top. The steak was decent but nothing special. Skirt steak, like the nearby flank steak, contains very little fat and is best when marinated for quite a while. If not, it needs to be cut up into small pieces, like beef fajitas. This steak was good when cut up, but pretty tough as it was served. Elizabeth was nice enough to give me a bite of her onion ring. It was awesome, a giant sweet onion (perhaps from Texas), and I wished I'd gotten an order of onion rings.

Zach had the brisket sandwich. He liked it, and I took small piece and agreed with him. I had the pulled pork sandwich. It was good. Not as good as the brisket, but still a quality sandwich. It was covered in sauce, like the sandwich I had the night before at Famous Dave's, but at least it was a tasty sauce. I rarely make a big deal about the side dishes at a BBQ joint, but these fries were the best I have had in a few weeks: crispy, seasoned, fresh-cut potatoes.

Elizabeth had some of her steak left when she was done eating, as well as a piece of garlic bread, so we again made a butty, with steak, fries and cole slaw. It was damn good, much better than the one we'd made the night before.