Well I made my way to Tee Pee last night and it was an experience to say the least. I was on the net at work the other day and watched a teaser for some new show that Andrew Zimmern is coming out with. The episode I was watching was shot here in Phoenix at the Tee Pee restaurant. He of course ordered the chile relleno. I thought it looked interesting so I planned a trip to check it out.
My mother and I arrived and walked in and had a seat in one of the booths in the back room. This is where the wheels came off the evening. The booth was ,to say the least, uncomfortable. My mother is only 4'10 and her whole body was under the table. All you could see was her head sticking up and she looked rather unhappy. We then tried another table and found much of the same. I am not a small guy and I was having problems with the fact that the seat was a bit to close to the table for me. We then tried a third table and found the same thing so we just stayed there. Finally a couple left at a table next to us and we moved for the forth time and this was much more comfortable.
I ordered the green chili chimichanga and my mother ordered the machaca burro. They both came out pretty quickly and looked very good but mine was a bit on the small side. My mothers burrito was much larger. I tried my chimi and found the first bite to have a strange flavour. It was something like a strong sour after taste. Not pleasant. As I ate my way deeper into the chimi it did get much better but still was not the best I had ever had. Biggest complaint was the shell on the chimi was not crispy at all. I am used to a chimi shell, which is deep fried, having a nice crunch to it. This was pretty mushy and soft.
My mother tried her burrito and was very pleased with the flavor. It had a nice soft tortia and the meat looked very nice. I reached over and had a taste and it was very good. If I would have known I would have ordered that instead. We also ordered a chile relleno to go so we would have a chance to give that a try since it looked so interesting on the Zimmern show I had seen. We finished our meals and payed and left taking our football sized relleno with us for later. I arrived home and had to take a bite of the chile relleno. It was NOT GOOD!!!!!! it was nothing but cheese with chiles laying on top with a ton of whipped egg whites over them. No flavour at all, and the texture was just not appealing. I had 3 bites and threw the rest away. That was $9 waisted.
All and all I would not go back to Tee Pee. There are so many mexican places here in Phoenix that kill Tee Pee in flavour and portion size, and they have booths that are much more comfortable.