Here’s the best deal around: $5 dinners at a Mexican restaurant in north Fort Worth
The $5 dinner is back.
Always the best bargain around, Los Zarapes Restaurant has brought back $5 platters with enchiladas, tacos or chalupas.
They’re served the same simple way Horalia Palomino has offered them at lunch for 34 years in her little restaurant at 1503 NW 25th St.
Only now, they’re $5 every weekday at lunch and all day on weekends, including a free lemonade.
For $40, Los Zarapes will pack a 3-pound family fajita dinner for five.
The restaurant also serves $5 breakfasts daily at 8 a.m.
Los Zarapes has always been something of a miracle. When it opened in 1986, it was heralded as the home of the $2.99 lunch.
Now, the Palomino family still charges only $5 for enchiladas, tacos or chalupas with rice and beans.
It’s their way of helping when money is tight.
“We thought it would be good for the community,” Nora Palomino wrote in an online message.
Los Zarapes serves barbacoa and menudo daily, not just on weekends.
Until Easter, Los Zarapes also serves a Friday “Lent plate” with two shrimp tortas with nopalitos, rice, lentils and capirotada (bread pudding) for $10.
It’s where civil-rights icon Dolores Huerta visited on a recent trip to Fort Worth.
When Los Zarapes opened, Horalia Palomino was 29 and a mother of two, launching her own business for the first time after Rivas Cafe moved out of the space.
Even then, the little strip shopping center 1 mile west of the Stockyards was well-worn. Colorful serapes covered holes in the walls.
Palomino chose that name: Los Zarapes.
Los Zarapes also serves a much broader menu of Mexican and Tex-Mex dishes, some rooted in the Palomino family’s Aguascalientes legacy and others added in recent years, including bistec a la Mexicana and seafood dishes.
The menu includes “street tacos” with cilantro and onion or crispy Tex-Mex tacos, along with posole, caldo de res, menudo and gorditas.
Los Zarapes is open for breakfast and lunch daily, dinner Fridays through Sundays; 1503 N.W. 25th St., 817-624-8013.
This story was originally published March 30, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
