Now with 2 locations, on Berry Road and at the Houston Farmer’s Market (nee Canino’s) on Airline. This report is about the newer location on Airline, a scaled down version of the ‘original’ on Berry which I’ve never been to. (Yes, I still miss the long running location on Navigation and haven’t been in that area for years).
First visit to the re-done Canino’s - I’ll introduce that in a separate topic. I met some of my senior’s group friends there Sunday. The group had been before, but I totally missed that one. Only six people signed up and only four came; we probably won’t be going back and I’m not particularly sad about that.
It’s a buffet. There’s at least one Agua Fresca at the beginning of the line which I didn’t notice until I was past it; I had already picked up a Jarritos Tamarind in the cooler cases though. Good selection of Jarritos plus of course Mexican coke.
The first part of the buffet is a la carte selections, which looked good, but I had decided I wanted the Carne Guisado. The plates are dished up next to the tamale station at the end of the line - assembled from a steam table. The Guidado was very disappointing - I wouldn’t order it again for sure. Came with mediocre Mexican rice reminiscent of a school cafeteria version and some of the lamest charros I’ve ever encountered. The mediocrity of Mexican rice and refritos and extruded, not handmade, tamales at the run-of-the-mill Tex Mex places had caused me to almost completely ignore Tex Mex for years. The steak was chewy and a little gristly - isn’t that dish supposed to be made with sirloin?
My companions had all picked from the a la carte offerings and they looked much better. I noted many of those were being put on a grill and heated up before being plated. Everything is served in clamshell ‘Styrofoam’ boxes. There’s a separate self-serve counter for napkins, plastic ware, salsa and dressings. Tamales are available at the end of the line - I think it’s ‘separate,’ with its own cashier and maybe intentionally a separate line so you don’t have to pass down the whole line to just buy tamales to go. They offer a larger variety of hand-made tamales now - at the Navigation store they only offered pork and chicken. I took home a dozen pork, my favorite, and will be eating them up before the week is ended. There is a similarly large variety of machine extruded tamales available - better than average quality as I recall.
Tamales to go are ‘undressed’ - i.e., no chili gravy, chili sauce - the condiments table offers 2 salsas and a few other things I guess are supposed to be dressings, but the little plastic cups are 1 tsp sized and you’d have to spend some time filling a quantity of them to take home.
Still probably the best Tex Mex tamales in the universe but not as awe-inspiring as they used to be IMHO.
I ‘wrongly’ ordered corn tortillas - they were possibly store bought and unimpressive; Most if not all of the a la carte items I think used handmade flour tortillas, which is of course ‘correct’ for Tex Mex. Many of the items/dishes common in Tex Mex were stolen 
from the Mexican estados across the border in NE Mexico where corn did not traditionally grow so they had invented the flour tortilla.
VERY IMPORTANT: if you only want to visit the (2 - ?) eateries on site, they’re both at the back so park in the back lot, off the side street. I parked upfront and had a very long walk. I found signage inadequate and might have given up had a kindly, non-English speaking worker understood my question and supplied directions. The long-standing, famous taco cart in the rear of Caninos, Tocambrero or something I think, that had the Tacos Mollejas (sweetbreads) is gone. There is only one other eatery apparently, Underbelly Burger in the RC Meat space right next to Alamo. There’s plenty of outdoor seating.
