Sarah's - Billings, MT

Posted By Michael Stern on December 28, 2006 4:53 AM

We hit Billings eager to have lunch at El Burrito, our favorite Mexican blue-plate lunchroom in Montana … and El Burrito was gone! We panicked for a moment until it dawned on us that the restaurant now occupying the same location, Sarah's, looks a whole lot like the old establishment that used to call itself "The Working Person's Eating Place." In fact it is one in the same, renamed Sarah's to honor one of the three sisters who founded it back in the 1980s, who passed away five years ago. It is still in the same family, though, Sarah's two sisters running it efficiently and hospitably, even if meal service is a little strange.

Here's the way it works. Upon entering, go to the back of the room to an order window. At the right of the window is a large posted menu. Choose your burritos, tacos, or enchiladas and tell the nice lady who steps out of the kitchen what you want. Then go to the cash register and pay for it. Now move over to the condiment bar and help yourself to Styrofoam cups full of hot sauce or mild sauce, onions, or jalapenos to carry to a table, where a basket of chips is set out along with lots of napkins. When you are halfway through the chips, the meal arrives.

We especially love the taquitos, which would be called flautas in much of the Southwest: tightly wrapped, crisp-fried tortilla tubes containing moist shredded beef. They are served with a cup of garlicky guacamole.

The order-taker grinned broadly when we said we wanted a red smothered beef burrito, telling us it was the most popular dish in the house. It is a monumental meal, the burrito loaded with big hunks of beef. Our one complaint is that the plastic forks provided are only barely up to severing the tortilla wrap and beef inside.

Sarah's is a hangout for locals, young and old. It is open for three meals a day, and at high noon, it is mobbed. As the lunch hour cleared out, one table in the center of the room was occupied by a group of teenagers carrying skateboards. Towards the front of the room was a family having a quiet discussion with each other in a language that sounded like Spanish, but wasn't. And we were busy plowing through some fine Mexican meals, grateful that nothing here has changed except the name.

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Posted By Emma Watson on September 15, 2011 9:39 PM

Oh so NOT good. Obviously homemade food here, but if you're not the best home cook in the area, then you really shouldn't open up a restaurant. How in hell this place got four stars and the best rating on Tripadvisor, I have no idea. I am from Colorado, staying here for a while for business, and the worst Mexican restaurant in Fort Collins is better than this. Again, not like it wasn't homemade; it was. But just because it's homemade doesn't mean it's good.

The guac was very soupy, not rich and creamy as it should be. Cheese on plate was skimpy at best. I think this business is cutting corners on food. The enchilada was totally strange. The chicken was OK: homemade, but not great flavor. It was the enchilada sauce that was a odd, more like chicken gravy than enchilada sauce. Bland.

Stay away. There has to be something better than this in Billings.

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Taquitos

Tortilla Chips

Chicken Enchiladas

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Posted By Emily Goerke on August 15, 2011 11:42 AM

If you're hungry in Billings, this place will hit the spot. There are little old ladies in the back of the restaurant cooking up all of the wonderful food, making it feel like home cooking. The tamales are delicious and make the slight detour off the highway worth the trip. The chorizo and egg burrito has some of the best chorizo we have found that far north of New Mexico.

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