As soon as you walk in, you notice the hands of those occupying many of the seats: thick and muscled, with dusty calluses. The fingers of a pair of them, sinewy as steel cables and belonging to a guy with a white Pancho Villa mustache, are interlaced in prayer. His head is bowed over a basket nest of tacos.
It’s the lunch rush at La Tiendita (15821 Manchester), located in a strip mall in Ellisville. Lunchtime is usually busy, with the majority of the conversation in Spanish. Although the West County suburb isn’t necessarily known for a large Hispanic population, several of these men do indeed live nearby. Some cut lawns and trim maples, herd scattered flocks of fallen leaves with roaring blowers, and broadcast mulch on lawns across the area. “By mid-November, we’ll start losing customers,” says owner Zeus Hernandez. “They won’t return until late in February.”
Hernandez opened La Tiendita because he saw an opportunity for a tortilleria in West County. That vision has grown into reality over time.
The Atmosphere
What initially began as a one-room lunch counter has morphed into a bona fide restaurant, complete with a full-service dining room. Sleek wooden tables and a shiny bar now provide ample seating for the lunch crowd, and a handful of counter spots have been replaced with casino-style games.
Despite the expansion, La Tiendita is philosophically unchanged. Hernandez’s plan was originally to make it all about the tortillas, which remains obvious. The machine—long as an old Buick, with an extended chute and a washtub on top for dumping the masa harina mix so it can be stirred, then squashed, and stamped into rounds—still dominates the side of the space, which is now a market and was once the original lunch counter. Through a door to the kitchen in the back, three generations of cooks hold court over a flattop griddle.
The shelves are crowded with products from all over South America, from Barracuda Mexican hair gel to votive candles to packages of pastelito pastries. In addition to the tortillas (La Tiendita supplies a number of local Mexican restaurants), the place is a sort of quick stop for groceries, odds, and ends.
The Menu
“We wanted to focus on a few dishes,” Hernandez says, “rather than try to have a big menu.”
He’s done that. There are three soups: one with beans; another a stew of beef with oversized chunks of vegetables; and menudo (available only on weekends), the impossibly addictive tripe stew, spicy, with an earthy aroma and that wonderful chewy texture.
Everything else is centered on the results of that masa harina, which is yellow as autumn corn and kneaded into a grainy dough. Carne asada, shredded chicken scarlet with achiote, beef brisket barbacoa, tongue, ground meat and vegetable picadillo—they’re all tucked into tacos, wrapped up flauta-style, or bulging into puffy gordita buns.
For the gorditas, the cornmeal dough is patted into chubby disc shapes and goes on the grill long enough to get a veneer of crispiness, though it’s still moist inside. It’s split and stuffed. They arrive warm which is how they should be eaten, still fresh. Whatever they’re filled with seems like a complement to the masa buns—they’re that good. The one you want to try is the huevos con nopales, a scramble of eggs mixed into nibbles of green nopale cactus pads. Take a bite, and you’ll think, This could be the best breakfast sandwich ever.
Flautas are in the style of la cocina notena. Instead of slender, deep-fried rolls, they’re more like burritos, hefty, the insides wrapped around flour tortillas.
Another possible surprise is the house’s pumpkin orange salsa. Unless you eat your Cheerios with a dollop of hot sauce, go easy enough for your palate to get its bearings. The green sauce is more piquant, bright with tomatillos and garlic.
While the menu is modest, it focuses on remarkably good food that’s completely unpretentious. Working your way through it is an experience in real home-style Mexican cuisine, with rich flavors and textures, at a wonderful little taqueria and tortilleria.
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La Tiendita
📍 15821 Manchester, Ellisville
📞 636-220-6422
⏰ 9 a.m.–8 p.m. Tue–Sat, 9 a.m.–4 p.m. Sun
