In the late summer when Minnesota was suddenly in the news and a lot of people who knew or little or nothing about the state were apparently feeling an urgent need to express their knowledge of stereotypes about it, I read a particularly ignorant post by some idiot on Threads to the effect that there is no good Mexican food in the Twin Cities. A lot of Americans have seemingly not updated their view of Minnesota since the release of the Coen Bros.’ Fargo. While it’s true that the state’s population is still predominantly white (roughly 77%), Minnesota’s racial diversity has been growing steadily in the last couple of decades and the Hispanic population, in particular, has grown significantly. The Twin Cities metro, as you might expect, is more diverse than the state as a whole, and as of 2022 Hispanics formed almost 7% of the population—that may not seem like much if you live in, say, California or Texas, but it stems from a >100% increase in the Hispanic population since 2000. Mexicans are the largest subgroup and indeed are the third largest ethnic group in the state (after Whites and African Americans). If you’re not from here you shouldn’t be surprised then to hear that there are a lot of Mexican (and other Hispanic) restaurants in the metro aimed at this growing population, a lot of them very good.

There are a number of Hispanic enclaves in the metro but if it’s Mexican food you’re looking for it’s hard to top Lake St. in Minneapolis between Highways 35 and 55. Lake St. in this stretch is lined with taquerias and other casual restaurants and is also home to larger shopping centers/malls such as Mercado Central and Plaza Mexico, whose food courts feature a lot of restaurants not visible from the street and generally not visible in very much of the Twin Cities food coverage. I don’t hold myself above the previous statement: anyone who’s been reading my Twin Cities food reports for a while knows I’ve not reviewed very many of these places either. Anyway, if you need to get a sense of a Twin Cities’ Hispanic food scene aimed entirely at Hispanic people all you need to do is visit either Mercado Central or Plaza Mexico.

This past Sunday we were at Plaza Mexico, which is situated on the corner of Lake and 5th Ave. S. Street parking is not easy to find in the area but there is an attached parking garage from which you can directly enter the complex (parking is cheap: all of $1). Whether you enter from the street or the parking garage you will quickly find yourself in the central food court on the ground/first floor. There are a large number of restaurants/counters that open onto the food court and if you don’t have an agenda, I expect you could probably eat very well at many of them. We, however, had an agenda. We were at Plaza Mexico to eat at an establishment recommended highly by long-time blog reader and commenter, Jim Grinsfelder: El Chivo Crazy.

El Chivo Crazy is located not in that ground/first floor food court but in a slightly smaller one on the second floor. There are other restaurants up here as well and, like the ones downstairs, all were doing very good business at lunch. Indeed, both the sit-down restaurant downstairs, Las Charolas, and the one upstairs—whose name I couldn’t figure out—were bursting at the seams. We plan to come back often to try more of these places but on the day El Chivo Crazy is what we were focused on.

We were a group of seven: five adults and our boys. We had enough Spanish among us to be able to order our food without too much hassle. The very helpful woman taking our orders at the counter seemed like she would be able to cope with customers who spoke no Spanish at all but Spanish is very clearly the default there. The menu situation is a little confusing. Names of dishes and some pictures adorn the shopfront but there aren’t always prices listed and not all the listings are clearly visible. The main thing to know though is that their specialties are barbacao de chivo (goat), as you would expect from the name, and barbacoa de borrego (lamb/sheep). You can get these meats on tacos, as stand-alone orders with tortillas and salsa or in platillos with rice etc. But you can also get other kinds of tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas etc. Between us, we sampled a decent range of the menu. After you order your food is brought out to you in the food court (pay attention to your receipt number).

On our table were the following: tacos with cachete (beef cheek) and longaniza for our younger boy; a large quesadilla al pastor for the older boy; enchiladas (with chicken and salsa verde) for the youngest adult; a couple of large plates of barbacoa de chivo and a smaller plate of barbacoa de borrrego for three of the other adults; and a plate of shrimp in salsa verde with rice and beans for the fifth adult. Everyone enjoyed their food immensely. The missus and I were in the barbacoa camp—splitting one order of the chivo and the borrego among us. These come with tortillas and salsas and we ate them in taco form. After our food arrived we also added on an order of consome de chivo: an excellent goat soup/broth with chickpeas, potatoes and more besides.

After everyone’s food arrived we realized we had not ordered in an optimal manner. The better thing to do would have been to order one large plate of the chivo and one of the borrego for everyone to share and get a few more things alongside. If you’re in a small group or by yourself or you don’t want to commit to quite so much of either the goat or the lamb, the smart move would be to get a taco of each and a bowl of consome. That’s what I would do if dining there alone.

For a look at Plaza Mexico and what we ate at El Chivo Crazy please launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it cost and to see what’s coming next.

The food is very reasonably priced for the quality and quantity. Our family’s order (two tacos, a quesadilla, a large barbacoa de chivo, a medium barbacoa de borrego, a bowl of consome and two Mexican Cokes) came to just around $55 before tip (tip in cash in the jar when you order as there’s no tip line when you pay by credit card). That’s pretty good value, especially when you consider that the missus and I were both too stuffed to eat dinner that evening. (Though as I’m looking at the check now I’m realizing that we were charged $9, seemingly not for two cokes but for an agua de jamaica and a horchata.)

Many thanks to Jim for the recommendation. If you—or anyone else—has experience eating at the other places in Plaza Mexico as well, I would love to get the lowdown. Oh yes, on our way out we stopped at La Michoacana on the ground floor where two members of the party got licuados.

Okay, what’s next from the Twin Cities? We are scheduled to eat at Petite Leon this weekend. So that will be next Tuesday’s report. Before that though I will definitely post the last California report from June. For real this time.