Chando’s founder competes in taco challenge on ‘Chopped.’ A look at how he finished
Lisandro “Chando” Madrigal, the founder of the Sacramento-area chain Chando’s Tacos and Chando’s Cantina, nearly won an episode of the hit Food Network show “Chopped” that aired last week.
The episode, titled “Taco Brawl,” required contestants to make tacos in all three rounds — appetizer, entree and dessert — for the grand prize of $10,000. Four mystery basket ingredients must be used per round; the contestant who turns in the worst dish each round gets the axe.
Madrigal barely survived the appetizer basket (masa dough, squash blossoms, pork tenderloin and pepinos locos, which are diced cucumbers with clam and tomato juices garnished with a tamarind candy) by making adobada tacos with a tamarind salsa. He sliced his thumb and had to throw away some possibly contaminated ingredients, which wasn’t shown on TV, and said that contributed to him not being able to top one of the judges’ tacos with squash blossoms, avocado and onions.
The entree round saw taco salad, red snapper, jicama and ancho chilis as the basket ingredients. Madrigal made Ensenada-style beer-battered snapper tacos with ancho chili salsa and jicama pico de gallo, a dish pulled straight from Chando’s menus.
A dessert basket containing a margarita, jamaica, a mango and cream cheese chimichangas proved problematic, though.
Madrigal made dessert tamales, arguing that dessert tacos weren’t authentically Mexican and the masa base were similar enough to tacos, but the judges weren’t buying it and sent him home.
“In the third round, I had already proven myself and done what I needed to do. I thought I was going to make good TV, good drama and pull the rabbit out of the hat and do something people weren’t expecting,” Madrigal told The Sacramento Bee.
Madrigal was contacted by Food Network scouts and had been set to film the episode in March 2020, but rescheduled for November because of the pandemic. He was in Atlanta this week, preparing to open the first of two Chando’s Tacos locations in the Southern city for his first expansion outside the Sacramento area.
He’s also planning a Chando’s Tacos and Tacos/Cantina hybrid in Decauter, Georgia, as well as a tortilla factory. Further expansion could soon reach the brand into Florida and the Maryland/Washington D.C. area, Madrigal said.
As for the dessert tamales that cost him the win? They’ll appear on Chando’s menu soon enough, perhaps as the “$10,000 tamale,” Madrigal said.
Viewers with cable packages including Food Network can watch Madrigal’s “Chopped” episode online.
This story was originally published May 24, 2021 at 5:00 AM.