Tres Is Better

Tres Amigos Tacos and Tequila, 909 W Magnolia Av, Ste 10, Fort Worth. 682-224-2554. 10:30am-10pm Sun-Wed, 10:30am-11pm Thu-Sat.

You don’t have to have resided in the Fort for a quarter of a century to feel the impact of the late Paul Willis on our food scene. Willis originated Pedro’s Trailer Park (pausing for a moment of silence) and concepted Fuzzy’s Tacos (back before it was franchised to infinity and lost the original spark of greatness). Fort Worth restaurateur and chef Sandy Rankin worked alongside Willis for the last two decades, and she, along with her husband and son, have tried to redeem some of the original recipes in their new Tres Amigos Tacos and Tequila.

Perhaps it doesn’t help that Tres Amigos has taken over the Magnolia spot owned by Yucatan Taco Stand, home of the perpetual health code violations. Yucatan was also Willis’ original concept, and I loved it shortly after it opened –– Yucatan was fancier than Fuzzy’s, and it made for a nice gathering place to blow off a particularly nasty week of TCU higher education. The post-COVID version of Yucatan was frankly a neighborhood nuisance. While Tres Amigos definitely offers a much cleaner environment with attentive service, the cuisine is super-similar.

Actually, “clean” is the first adjective I’d use to describe the place –– it smells like someone went deep with scrubbing utensils not too long ago.

The lovely patio is still apparently popular among weekday diners. It accommodated half a dozen of them when I recently visited for lunch with a friend from my TCU days. Another dozen customers were scattered throughout the inside.

While waiting for my dining companion, I ordered a house margarita on the rocks. It was the perfect tart-sweet balance, and my only regret was that I hadn’t made my lunch date for early dinner, when I could have enjoyed a slightly cheaper beverage during happy hour.

My dining companion joined me and noticed olive green and light orange concoctions spinning in the frozen machine, and server Felisha obliged with a couple of samples. The orange was a house-created special with a vodka base that tasted mostly like a baby aspirin. The green creation was the St. Patrick’s week feature. The peach was pleasantly muted, and the well-rounded Lucky Charm was definitely a pot of gold at the beginning of this meal.

Queso is a must for a catchup lunch at a Tex-Mex joint. The queso blanco and accompanying chips with orange spice dusting pretty much tasted like Fuzzy’s products. Not terrible, not awesome. Sadly, the kitchen was out of the spicy black bean dip.

Tres Amigos serves a generous array of breakfast tacos all day, either as single tacos or as a plate with two of the same tacos, plus rice and borracho beans. Choose flour or corn tortillas. (Nobody judges here.) A single beef chorizo-and-egg taco on a corn tortilla was an unexpectedly piquant treat. The Mexican sausage was richly seasoned and smoky, and it paired well with the corn and egg. The two breakfast-taco plate, with loaded egg, cheese, and avocado tacos, needed some salsa or tomato and onion — what we were offered was a jarred hot sauce. If you know you want your breakfast tacos with salsa, order that as an appetizer. The presentation was underwhelming with the exception of the delicious, savory, crispy fried potatoes, which you can also order as a side.

The enchilada plate also came with rice and beans –– the menu indicated refried beans, but what came out were borracho beans. The enchiladas were flat and difficult to cut, and while they were appropriately cooked to temperature, the cheese was rubbery. Six flavorful, plump shrimp and a fiery, well-seasoned green sauce somewhat redeemed the dish. The beans were fine –– most of the side stayed in the cup in which they were served. But the fluffy, subtly seasoned white rice was absolutely delicious. I can generally take or leave the rice in a Mexican restaurant, and while this stuff wasn’t traditional Mexican rice, it was tasty.

Tres Amigos has been open since the fall, and at some point last winter, I went with friends for drinks, and I liked the loaded Latin nachos –– the queso tasted better on top of a pile of chips, red cabbage, pico, and a roasted garlic aioli.

Happy-hour specials are pretty standard, but Taco Tuesday offerings include deeply discounted chicken and green chile carnitas tacos. If you wear your medical scrubs weekdays for lunch, they’ll give you a 15% discount on your check (alcohol excluded).

Tres Amigos Tacos and Tequila
Queso blanco $5.50
House ’rita $9.50
Lucky Charm (’rita of the month) $10.95
Tres Enchiladas plate w/beans and rice $15.99 (shrimp add $2)
Breakfast taco plate w/avocado $11.59
Beef chorizo-and-egg breakfast taco $2.89