My hometown has a couple of popular Mexican restaurants. One of them, El Charro, is an institution in town. It’s been around since I was in middle school — trust me when I say that’s a long time — and it has offered the same consistent menu for as long as I can remember.
I call El Charro “comfort food” Mexican because it’s a lot like home-cooked Mexican food. It’s so popular that when the owner decided to move to a new location, the old location sustained so much business that he kept both going.
From time to time, El Charro has to update its prices. Every restaurant does so to keep up with inflation and changing food prices, so it’s not a surprise to see price increases at any establishment.
But El Charro’s most recent menu change has sent shockwaves throughout our community. For decades, when you sat down at your table at El Charro, a staff member brought you baskets of chips and bowls of salsa. However, the new menu, which debuted last week, announces that chips and salsa are now $2.50. If you buy a cheese dip, bean dip, or guacamole, your chips and salsa are still free.
I called El Charro to confirm, but I didn’t think to ask whether that charge applies to the whole table or per person. On Facebook, people were losing their minds over it! Reposts of the original post with photos of the menu dominated my timeline.
The other big Mexican place in town, El Chaparro, posted a photo of its free chips and salsa. People also decided to take the opportunity to virtue signal how they suddenly like El Chaparro so much better. Some people laid it on pretty thick, going over the top in their enthusiasm for El Chaparro and hatred toward El Charro.
For what it’s worth, I like El Chaparro, and a friend of mine is the manager there. But it’s not quite as good as El Charro to me.
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Look, I get the outrage. I don’t like the idea of paying for something that I used to get for free, either. But it’s not a hill for me to die on when it comes to eating Mexican food.
I also can’t help but think that there’s a bit of entitlement here. One friend of mine posted on Facebook, “Do we really all just feel entitled to free chips and salsa?” Of course, she asked the question with laughing emojis, but she edited the post to add this later on: “UPDATE: Apparently the answer is ‘yes’; folks feel VERY strongly that a restaurant should be feeding them something for free just because they always have” with another laughing emoji added.
El Charro is doing what it needs to do to stay in business. Even with the occasional price increases, it’s always been a delicious, affordable meal. It’s often more affordable than fast food. We don’t have to like it to understand it.
But here’s the thing: we know what’s prompting this move. It’s Joe Biden’s economy. The whole time Biden has been in office, the price of everything has gone up, and all those increases pile on top of one another.
We’re not just seeing it at Mexican restaurants; it’s popping up everywhere. My mom, sister, and nieces went to a restaurant on Friday that has always served honey butter crescent rolls at the table. The waitress brought their rolls out just like always without even asking, but when the bill arrived, there was a $1.99 charge for them.
The most recent consumer price index information shows that all items have gone up 3.1% between Jan. 2023 and Jan. 2024. Food prices alone have gone up 2.6% over that timeframe, and that breaks down into a 1.2% increase for “food at home” and a 5.1% increase for “food away from home” — which we know includes those amazing honey butter crescent rolls and those addictive chips and salsa. “Food away from home” saw one of the biggest increases of any sector over the past year.
It's not just $2.50 for chips and salsa here and $1.99 for crescent rolls there. It’s also an extra 20¢ per gallon for gas, another dollar for a pound of ground beef, another rise on your electric bill, and everything else going up little by little.
This economy is nickel-and-dime-ing us everywhere we turn, and we can place the blame for that at the feet of Biden and his administration. The president, his handlers, and the mainstream media spin doctors will try to lie to you, but you see the state of the economy every time you pull out your wallet.
I hate that it’s come to this for El Charro, but I equally lament the response. El Charro isn’t the only place having to raise prices and resort to measures like this. I hope the backlash doesn’t hurt El Charro’s business. I love that place too much to let something like that keep me away. At the same time, I might visit El Chaparro a little more often, even if it’s less convenient for me.
We need to support small businesses in our community, especially during times like these. After all, Biden’s economy is affecting them, too.
Special thanks to my friend and estimable colleague Stephen "Vodkapundit" Green for the title and the inspiration to turn a crazy story into a column. Give him a round of applause.
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