First visit: Oct 1995
***Closed Nov 2023. It needed to.
---Rude Dante has shared some final thoughts below.
I had to go back one more time. I wanted to load up on the carbs before a full day of record crate digging. And what better place to go than my old favorite haunt, El Tepehuan. Most assuredly that visit in 2018 was an anomaly. They must have fixed those mistakes and brought back the recipes of yore. Why would anyone mess with something so perfect? I'm sad to say that the last visit was representative of the new El Tepehuan (at least they ditched the dopey El Tep moniker). My crack below about the grill may not be far off the mark. I'm beginning to wonder if they even have a grill at this point.
Essentially the review below is null and void. The only thing they retained by moving a few doors down were the oak chairs with El Tepehuan engraved in them. And a few warlord Caucasian looking Aztec paintings. It's a much bigger space and they have a large bar now. The kitchen is in the back - where you can't see the cook preparing your meal like at the old steakhouse. So from the beginning... I ordered coffee since they have flavored creamers. Wasn't very hot but the second cup was. Chips and salsa were waiting for me. They used to charge for them, but now they're free. And the chips are more crispy than in the old days. This is probably the only thing they improved on. The salsa is not the same - at all. They just went with an entirely new recipe for no good reason. Their old sauce was loaded with chopped chiles and was incredibly flavorful and oftentimes very spicy. Probably that's why - people complained about the heat level. If they can't take it - they can go somewhere else. Plenty of other lame options out there. Not to say their new sauce isn't any good. No, that's not fair. I do like it - but it's way more typical. Hardly exceptional like the old one was. Well I'll forgive everything if the burrito comes out like the old days. Nada with a capital Nada. I knew I was in trouble when it arrived about 3 minutes after ordering it. No-no-no! In the old days our chef would cook the chicken with that perfect oiled glaze. Now they just pre-make the chicken in a sauce. No fuss, no muss. Plop that into flour tortilla, dump a ladle full of lukewarm chile on top - and voila, here's your breakfast sir. Embarrassing really. The chile doesn't taste the same either. I did find the bay leaf, so they kept some of the recipe it appears. But it used to be tastier. It was never super spicy.
In conclusion, El Tepehuan is now a standard Mexican restaurant when it used to be one of the best I'd ever been too. Rude Dante has also shared a similar sentiment about the new restaurant. It's not "The Teep" anymore. Go here if you want a good Mexican breakfast. Go somewhere else for an exceptional one. Disappointing, and I can see no reason to go back now. We gave them 4 years to fix their earlier mistakes. And they didn't do it. At least we have the great memories.
--- 12/17/18 review
They finally completed their move to the corner lot that once housed a Vietnamese restaurant. Mrs. RJG and I tried it again, but it didn't seem the same. I think the old grill may have been cleaned lol. We'll need to come back again though to ensure this might have been a one off experience.
--- 7/5/13 review
This is one of the few places, from before this blog anyway, that I can recite the exact first date I visited. It was October 16, 1995. It was a late afternoon on a Monday, when the secretary (err, Executive Assistant) of our department was scurrying about trying to unload a free football ticket for the Broncos game that night. It was for only one seat. And there was probably only one loser in the whole office who would have had nothing better to do that night, and who was unmarried or unattached. Yea... me. About 15 minutes later, coincidentally, I was introduced to our new SAP "basis" lead, who had just relocated his family to Denver from Cincinnati (I was the Oracle DBA on the project at that time). That gentleman we will identify for this blog as Rude Dante (as of May 2018...), who became a lifelong friend that I still talk with frequently to this day (and is now an RJG contributor). So I mentioned to him that I was going to the game. Rude Dante said that he was going as well, with his brother and sister-in-law. He asked if I wanted to tag along. That was a no brainer - I didn't have to worry about parking if nothing else. Then he says to me:
"We're going to The Teep before the game - you been?". "No, what's that?" And the rest is history as they say. BTW, Denver crushed Oakland 27-0 (this was when Oakland was still reliably good). It was at the old Mile High Stadium. Man, that place went absolutely nuts that night.
Rude Dante's older brother had lived in Denver for many years, and this was their go-to spot for Mexican. Rude Dante himself had taken a shine to it on his frequent trips to Denver. This was an old diner that sat on one of those "old town" type streets (which is exactly how one could describe the scene on Broadway in old Englewood). And there's almost no parking out front (there's plenty in the back). In those days, El Tepehuan was a dump, with old restaurant furniture and poor lighting. As is the case with the RJG now, those things didn't bother me then either. I dipped the chip into the "hot sauce", placed it in my mouth, and I knew I'd be a regular at "The Teep" forever. To this day, I would argue that El Tepehuan's salsa is one of the best, if not
the best salsa one can get at a restaurant. It's very spicy with a unique taste I haven't experienced anywhere else. This "unique taste I haven't experienced anywhere else" is actually the storyline of El Tepehuan in general. It doesn't taste like Mexican food I've had anywhere else in Denver, or DFW, or the USA, or Mexico for that matter. It's one of a kind.
I don't think it's an exaggeration for me to say I've been to El Tepehuan more than 150 times since that first night in late 1995. The restaurant has definitely improved the interior with homemade carved heavy wood furniture. But other than that small face lift, the place still has the look and feel of a 1960s breakfast diner. And the food quality is pretty much the same now as it was then. Maybe even better. Every time I go to Denver, I want to eat here at least once. And that's precisely what I did this past May.
So what are the favorites there? Rude Dante swears by the chile relleno - says it's one of the best of its kind (there are a couple of types of chile relleno's that he can give full dissertations on). And he's also very fond of their Huevos Rancheros, something I too can attest for.
Naturally being from Texas, I had a tendency to go for more Tex-Mex offerings at first. That's not a good idea in principle when eating Mexican in Denver. It took me awhile to find my favorite dish there, but once I did, it sold me even more than just the amazing salsa. First of all, I love their ground beef. Just a good old fashioned ground beef taco at El Tepehuan is a fantastic taste experience. But it's their chicken that steals the day. Their shredded chicken is the gold standard by which no other place can even get close too. They heavily season it, then fry it lightly to give it crispy edges and the taste of a grill that probably hasn't been replaced since 1966. Throw those bad boys into a taco and slather it with El Tepehuan's salsa, and you will go home happy. And maybe a little scared because the heat of the sauce is still on your lips.
But even better, is to get that same chicken stuffed into a burrito the size of your head, and then have it doused in their incredible green chile. Like everything else, El Tepehuan's green chile is like none other you've had. First of all it's not spicy (What? The RJG likes something that isn't spicy?). But the flavors are incredible. I do know they use bay leaves, which isn't in your typical recipe. So: Chips and salsa, one big fat chicken burrito buried in green chile, washed down with a cheap Mexican lager. I'm presuming this is what heaven is going to be like. It better be. :-)
This is one of the RJG's favorite restaurants on the planet (and Mrs. RJG loves it as well). It was a deep secret in the 90s. Word's gotten out over the years, but it's still a "local find". The place is always crowded - whether it's breakfast, lunch, or dinner. But it's never packed. There's always one or two empty tables awaiting you.
10/16/95; 9/18/11; 7/5/13 (new entry); 4/13/15; 12/17/18;10/23/22
---1/14/24 (Rude Dante epilog)
While the old girl had fallen from her former glory, it still saddens us to see her go for good. Graciela was there for our last visit or two - kinda felt like I should say something to her, but they were busy the last month. While some of our favorites had fallen in quality (salsa, primarily - but other specific dishes had also lost their luster), a few things I tried for the first time the last couple years were quite good (most notably the carnitas). My last meal was similar to my first there in August of 1995: huevos rancheros, eggs over easy, side relleno. Vaya con dios, El Tepe!
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