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| - On this, my 4th time dining at Rita's, I'm having my first meal of the day after 3:30 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. I have a breakfast-specific coupon and having not eaten yet at this late hour, called to confirm that the breakfast dishes are served all day long, so figured "why not". The dining room was an oasis of cool comfort on yet another blisteringly hot summer day. In the cool quiet of the nicely appointed dining room you would not even be aware that you're practically sitting on top of the 10.
My initial server took my order promptly but returned to inform me my first choice was unavailable, but this turned out to be a good thing as my substitute Huevos con nopales (scrambled eggs with vegetables, including nopales/cactus, house potatoes and tortilla, were absolutely excellent, and of generous portion too. Service was polite as always, though somewhat absentee, as they clearly had more business than they were prepared for at mid-afternoon.
It was a good thing I and other would-be diners were apparently not in a hurry. Customers looked to each other in helpless amusement as we waited and waited and waited for our server, any server, to come by. As one hurriedly passed near me, oblivious to or ignoring one LONG waiting young man on other side of restaurant who had tried repeatedly to flag down a passing any employee passing by for quite some time, I asked the harried server to please help that customer, who came up and thanked me for my assistance and joked good-naturedly about our respective long waits. Finally, though I'd just had breakfast, it was by now 4:30 p.m. and my heart, mouth, and mind were fixated on having a flan, but alas they were out of that too, so I settled for sopapilla, a honey drizzled puff pastry, but it was a hollow (pun intended) substitute for the excellent flan I'd had there before.
While it wasn't a highlight day for Rita's usual level of service, once again the food was excellent, and I still look forward to going back for more. 4 or more for the food, and I'm going to leave it there, regarding today as an aberration in customary quality of service.
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