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A 12-ounce New York strip steak comes with grilled onions and roasted garlic at Tu Asador, a Mexican-style steakhouse in Castle Hills.

A Mexican hamburguesa includes beef, ham and grilled panela cheese, served with fries at Tu Asador, a Mexican-style steakhouse in Castle Hills. Drinks include a 24-ounce draft Negra Modelo beer dressed as a michelada, background.

Wagyu sausage is grilled and served with grilled onions at Tu Asador, a Mexican-style steakhouse in Castle Hills.

Tacos dorados de chicharrón are fried and filled with chicharrón prensado at Tu Asador, a Mexican-style steakhouse in Castle Hills. Drinks include the house margarita, top right.

Tu Asador is a Mexican-style steakhouse that opened in May 2021 in Castle Hills.

Panela asado is grilled panela cheese in salsa ranchera at Tu Asador, a Mexican-style steakhouse in Castle Hills.

Mostachon is a crumbled cookie cake layered with cream and Nutella at Tu Asador, a Mexican-style steakhouse in Castle Hills.

Ceviche de res is diced sirloin marinated in lime juice served with avocado and tomato at Tu Asador, a Mexican-style steakhouse in Castle Hills.

Chicharrón de rib-eye is grilled and fried pieces of rib-eye served with guacamole and tortillas at Tu Asador, a Mexican-style steakhouse in Castle Hills. In the background is a cocktail called the Sierra Madre with pineapple-jalapeño tequila, Gran Gala and pineapple juice.

The menu includes, clockwise from front, panela asado in salsa ranchera, a hamburguesa, a michelada-style beer and housemade potato chips at Tu Asador, a Mexican-style steakhouse in Castle Hills.

A 12-ounce New York strip steak comes with grilled onions and roasted garlic at Tu Asador, a Mexican-style steakhouse in Castle Hills. At top right is a baked potato with carne asada.

The family-owned Mexican-style steakhouse Tu Asador in Castle Hills arose from the ashes of a pandemic that scorched the restaurant jobs of chef José González and his sisters Regina, Valentina and Emilia.

As they looked for ways to rebuild their hospitality careers, they refocused their energies into re-creating the beef culture they grew up with in Monterrey, Mexico. So they started Tu Asador as a home delivery ghost kitchen, then moved into the former home of Spoon Eatery a year ago.

Tu Asador is one of those uplifting bootstrap narratives that moves from the family-style carne asada parties of the González family to a full steakhouse experience in Castle Hills. And when Tu Asador channels that backyard barbecue passion, it’s on fire, with steaks that bear the stripes and seasoning of a life spent behind the grill.

Served with grilled onions and roasted garlic on a butcher’s board branded with the restaurant’s logo, Tu Asador’s 12-ounce strip steak gave seared, cross-hatched insight into a family with cattle culture running through its veins like the juices tracing across the board. Salt and pepper found their savory balance on a steak trimmed clean and tight, leaving just enough fat to lend caramelized character at the edges.

Grilled and sliced meat served family-style with grilled onions is called the Experience at Tu Asador, a Mexican-style steakhouse in Castle Hills. From left is rib-eye, sirloin and skirt steak arrachera.

A family-style steak board called the Experience began with choosing sirloin, rib-eye or skirt steak arrachera by weight, and my custom Experience involved a half-pound of each. Built on the idea of a shared plate in the center of the table, the steak came sliced in three neat piles flanked by grilled onions and tortillas.

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Even sliced, the cuts needed no explanation.

The rib-eye melted perfectly into itself with every bite. The sirloin proved again why it’s the lean, mean flavor king, the master of drawing in and exhaling everything the charcoal has to offer. And the arrachera reaffirmed that while its best, highest purpose is still the hard sizzle of a fajita, it’s also pretty good wearing a boutique steakhouse blush.

If I stopped there, doing nothing but looking down at those pretty steaks on their cutting boards, this would be a different review. But restaurants don’t work that way. They’re full-contact experiences where atmosphere matters, where details matter and where the rest of the menu matters. And that’s where Tu Asador got away from itself.

Tu Asador is a Mexican-style steakhouse that opened in May 2021 in Castle Hills.

The space itself went from looking like a West Elm showroom when it was Spoon to a bare-bones bar and grill with TVs on the walls, concrete floors and wooden tables with the finish bubbling up like they’d been left out in the rain. The handful of drinks I ordered from a cocktail menu with more than 50 options tasted like bar syrup and bad mixes, especially a mezcal old fashioned with an aftertaste like ashtrays and diet ginger ale. The 32-ounce “litros” cocktails come in clear plastic cups that might as well say Big Gulp.

And sometimes a family-style restaurant means letting the guests get too comfortable, comfortable enough to bring their boutique dog breed inside to lie at their feet while they eat. All that’s fine for a bar and grill, but when I’m paying north of $50 for an a la carte steak, I want more beauty and less beast.

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Building a full meal beyond Tu Asador’s steaks was a challenge. A $25 appetizer of chicharrón de rib-eye brought grilled and fried bites of rib-eye that chewed like gnarly bubblegum. A Mexican-style hamburguesa provisioned with beef, ham and grilled cheese couldn’t coax flavor from any of them. And the bar-food majesty of grilled panela asado was presented instead as a thick block of cheese with grilled color but no warmth in a pool of weak tomato salsa.

Split grilled beef bones with bone marrow called tuetanos are served with tortillas and chiles torreados at Tu Asador, a Mexican-style steakhouse in Castle Hills.

More ambitious efforts fell short as well. Ceviche de res with sirloin “cooked” in lime juice tasted less like a ceviche or a tartare and more like cold, tough steak. And the primal indulgence of bone marrow became a study in darkness and light when the split marrow bones showed up in two different tones, one pale and waxy, the other dark and ashy, neither tasting exactly right. A leaden, starchy trough of maxed-out baked potato loaded with carne asada proved more a liability than an asset.

A few small things connected. Tu Asador makes great Northern Mexico-style flour tortillas as strong and bold as vintage manuscripts on the art of tortilla-making. A plate of perfectly grilled and sliced Wagyu smoked sausage and onions turned the steak Experience into a full barbecue. And from Tu Asador’s more casual weekday lunch menu, tacos dorados de chicharrón capitalized on the more meaty experience of chicharrones prensados.

The flaws and triumphs are all part of the story at Tu Asador. And I love a good restaurant backstory.

But loving the story doesn’t always mean loving the way it intersects with my own story when I sit down. At Tu Asador, the story needs a good editor.

msutter@express-news.net | Twitter: @fedmanwalking | Instagram: @fedmanwalking

8055 West Ave., Suite 125, 210-530-4595, tuasadorsatx.com

Quick bite: Mexican-style steakhouse and bar in Castle Hills

Hit: Grilled steaks, tacos dorados de chicharrón, grilled sausage

Miss: Hamburguesa, ceviche de res, cocktails

Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday; 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Thursday; 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday

Price range: Appetizers, $8-$25; soups and salads, $6-$15; steaks, $28-$52 and up; entrees, $15-$42; desserts, $6-$14; lunch entrees, $8-$15

Alcohol: Cocktails, beer and wine

***** Excellent, an almost perfect experience

**** Good, among the best in the city

*** Average, with a few standouts

** Poor, with a redeeming factor or two

Express-News dining critics pay for all meals.

Mike Sutter is the Express-News restaurant critic. Before joining the Taste Team in 2016, he served as restaurant critic for the Austin American-Statesman and editor of FedManWalking.com. He's appeared on NPR's "All Things Considered," ABC's "To Tell the Truth" and written for The Guardian, Bon Appetit and The Wall Street Journal.