Eat Like a Beach Boy! Crustaceans of the Stars!

Recipe for the Armadillo's legendary shrimp enchiladas

Commander Cody was a fan of the Dillo’s shrimp enchiladas. Photo by Melinda Wickman. AusPop Archives.

Music was the headliner, but food was a strong opening act at the Armadillo World Headquarters (1970-1980), which baked its own bread, and popularized nachos to Anglos long before ballparks caught on. Talking Heads had never even heard of nachos, and they became obsessed, one of the reasons they played the venue six times in four years.

To most touring acts, however, culinary nirvana came at the pre-show catering, with one dish standing out. Van Morrison even added a show on short notice to try the shrimp enchiladas Jerry Garcia and Frank Zappa couldn’t stop raving about. Out on the road is usually not the place for such fine dining, so when you were served a great dish you remembered it like a beautiful groupie.

The Beach Boys were too big for the 1,600-capacity Armadillo, so they played 6,000-capacity Municipal Auditorium a block away, and hired the Dillo kitchen to serve them the exotic (for the ‘70s) seafood enchiladas before the show. (Don’t worry, baby, the recipe is at the end!)

Head chef Jan Beeman made the dish famous, but original Armadillo kitchen staffer Becky Ricketts, who left in ’73, is credited with devising the original recipe. Also contributing was Rikke Moursand, better known as “the Guacamole Queen,” who often cooked in the unairconditioned kitchen in her underwear and flipflops.

Big Rikke with Soap Creek’s George Majewski. Photo courtesy AusPop archive.

“Big Rikke” had to keep her clothes on when Soap Creek Saloon hired her to recreate the shrimp enchiladas for a fancy Country Music Association event at the club in April 1976. Thumbing his nose at Nashville, as he sang through it all the way to No. 1, Willie Nelson and the other pot-smoking longhairs with beards had Music Row shaking in its Luccheses. You could pick up a Nudie suit for five bucks at a Franklin Road yard sale. The CMA decided to make peace by moving its annual convention to Austin- and Willie told them to stick that olive branch, um, over there in the vase. Outlaw, hell. Willie wanted as many people as possible to hear his music. He and Charley Pride would play a private concert at the 200-capacity Soap Creek, so Nash Vegas bigwigs could really understand what was goin’ down in Austin. The unofficial greeter was Coach Darrell Royal, country music’s biggest fan.

“Everybody had the time of their lives,” said Soap Creek co-owner Carlyne Majer, who also got Marcia Ball, Floyd Tillman, Pee Wee King, and Milton Carroll on stage that unforgettable Tuesday night. “Next time you come to Nashville,” WSM/Grand Ole Opry CEO Bud Wendell told Carlyne, “let me show you around.” When she took him up on the offer a few months later, Wendell took Carlyne to meet her idol Dolly Parton. She also found it easier to get meetings for her Austin Tejas Sounds management company. “Everybody in Nashville was still talking about those shrimp enchiladas,” says Majer. For many, it was the first time they’d had Mexican food without raising a flag.

I’ve been hearing about those tortilla-wrapped, sauce-covered, crustaceans for years, and I finally got a chance to try them for an article in the Texas Highways “Outlaw Issue” (September ‘23). The chef was Leea Mechling, who runs the essential AusPop music preservation organization. Former Dillo staffer Leea found the recipe about four years ago when she was putting together a Micael Priest retrospective, a year after the poster great’s passing. Going through her collection of Armadillo ephemera, looking for anything that might have Priest’s distinctive artwork, she found an unpublished brochure titled “Recipes from the Armadillo Kitchen,” which she and a cook named Rory had put together for the 1977 Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. Inside were cooking directions for the homemade “Armadillo bread,” vegetable casserole, and, of course, the shrimp enchiladas.

Rory takes a fruit basket from the Armadillo kitchen to backstage. Photo courtesy AusPop archives.

Leea’s shrimp enchiladas were as good as advertised, with the sour cream and cheese filling providing a creamy balance to the crunch of the shrimp. And that enchilada sauce should be sold in jars at Whole Foods. Someone wrote a letter to Texas Highways about how she had to read the recipe “several times since the pile of tomatoes and onions was bigger than I thought it would be.” After tasting: “Wow- best red enchilada sauce I’ve ever eaten- and the shrimp enchiladas were great, too! I can see why they’ve lived on…”

Texas Highways photo by Eric W. Pohl.

If you want to give it a try, here you go. This recipe makes 12 enchiladas, but the leftovers can be frozen.

Armadillo’s Famous Shrimp Enchiladas

Ingredients

24 medium to large fresh shrimp, peeled and deveined
12 corn tortillas
1 cup chicken stock
1 avocado

For the stock

1 clove of garlic (peeled and chopped fine)
12 tomatoes
6 onions
1 pound canned green chile strips
Juice squeezed from half a lemon
1⁄3 pound butter
Cut the vegetables in half and then in quarters. Sauté vegetables in the butter on low heat until onions become translucent. Mash it up to break down the veggie chunks. (Mechling used an immersion blender). Add chicken stock to thin the sauce if it seems too thick.

For the roux

¼ pound butter
½ cup flour
¼ cup cumin
¼ cup chili powder
Melt butter in saucepan, stir in dry ingredients to a paste-like consistency. Cool for a minute or two to cook the flour. Add the roux to the stock and stir constantly on low flame until sauce thickens. The mixture will be enough for about three servings. Use what is needed and save leftovers in freezer.

For the filling:

1 pound Monterrey jack cheese, shredded
½ pound sour cream
2 small red onions, finely chopped
Mix all the cheese, sour cream, and 1 red onion.

Assembly:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a baking pan. Cover bottom of pan with a small amount of sauce. Soften tortillas by dipping into chicken stock until soft enough to roll. Put about 3 tablespoons of cheese/sour cream filling off center of the tortilla. Add 2 or 3 shrimp across the filling. Roll the tortilla and place seam side down in the baking pan. Continue until 8-12 enchiladas have been prepared. Spread sauce on top and sprinkle with more shredded jack cheese.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until hot and bubbly. Top with finely chopped red onion and sliced avocado.