A note on the words: chicharron is fried pork rind, tinga is chicken stewed with tomato and chipotle, and fajitas are marinated meat grilled and wrapped in tortillas at the table. Tajin is a Mexican chili-lime salt. Otoshi is the small appetizer a Japanese bar brings unbidden and charges you for, effectively a cover charge. Prices are as of this writing (August 2026).
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San Antonio TEX-MEX Tokyo Midtown Hibiya on AutoReserve (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
I want to eat something good today too. This is Hangover Meshi. This time I went to see a film upstairs at Tokyo Midtown Hibiya. When the screening starts at something like 18:40 it finishes close to eight, which makes deciding where to eat a little awkward. So I went to the Mexican place downstairs in Midtown, in what looks like a food court connected directly to the subway station. (There has been a lot of Mexican lately, but Mexican is good, so however many times you eat it, it is fine.) San Antonio TEX-MEX.
It is open-plan, but the zones are marked out normally.
There does seem to be some notion that you may eat things bought elsewhere here too.
I had thought it would be all light bites, but there are plenty of substantial dishes.
I had imagined drinking while gathering bits and pieces from other places, but this alone is genuinely enough.
There are a lot of dishes from the home country as well, so I am looking forward to it.
First, beer.
The drink counter at the cinema had a huge line. I wanted to buy something and could not, with the time.
Adjust the price so the margin matches the counter if you must, but please put in a vending machine.
So, with a throat completely dry, a clean Corona is good.
Tortilla chips as a snack. Two kinds of dip.
Since I am bound to order nachos, which are chips again, I would rather the cover snack were in a category I would not order.
Because of course I ordered the nachos. Which leaves the earlier chips stranded.
In the end, once they were running low, I merged them.
Cheese melted to a slick, avocado and taco meat over the top — the standard of standards. But it is good.
And it goes tremendously well with a clean Corona.
A quesadilla, house-made flour tortilla folded over the filling and griddled.
Inside is spicy chicken. The stringy cheese is good. I want convenience stores to sell this as a hot snack.
Spicy fried shrimp.
The seasoning is fairly strong, but a squeeze of lime cleans it up. The shells are on, but they are fried crisp enough that you can simply crunch through them.
Since the quesadilla was chicken, let us have beef as well. Fajitas. Meat marinated in spices and grilled. These also seem to be meant for wrapping in tortillas. A bean dip comes with it. The meat carries the spices clearly, and being skirt it is tender inside with little fat, so it is very easy to eat. The drawback is that you end up feeling you have eaten far too many tortillas. Perhaps the tortillas are not necessary.
A beer called Tecate. They gave us a glass with a salted rim as well. My first time drinking this.
Looking at the menu, chicharron, the fried pork rind, and I remembered — ah, this one. When I went to Shin-Koiwa with a Mexican friend of mine, they taught me that if a place has this it is the real thing, and that Mexicans often eat it as a drinking snack. It is a crisp chip, but a distinctive one. You get a definite sense of pork skin, and it can be quite fatty. Eating it again, I think you rather need tequila or beer alongside or it gets heavy.
Last, pork tacos. After chicken and beef, pork to finish.
Pulled pork, or rather pork shredded for you, scattered with onion, cilantro and pineapple.
Eating it, the thing that struck me is that the pineapple works remarkably well.
Bloody Maria.
The tequila version of a Bloody Mary. Does Mary become Maria when read in Spanish? The chili-lime salt they rim the glass with, something like Tajin, is a nice touch. Easy to drink and good.
It is just right for a quick meal on the way home from a film, though if you arrive after eight, last orders come quickly, so you cannot stay long. Incidentally the heat is mild throughout, but if you ask for Tabasco they will give it to you, and I was in fact pouring it on liberally. For somewhere that feels like a food court, the menu is very large. There is wine as well, and even chicharron. I thought it a good place to eat Mexican casually in Hibiya. Next time I wonder whether one could pull off eating at another stall and buying tacos here. I shall try it sometime.
San Antonio TEX-MEX Tokyo Midtown Hibiya (American / Hibiya Station, Yurakucho Station, Ginza Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★☆☆ 3.3
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
