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| - First, the good parts. Friendly, excellent staff. Everyone working the bar and the floor was very welcoming and knew what they were about when it came to greeting, mixing a drink, etc. We enjoyed our margaritas very much. The dining room could be described as colorful, hipster funk with well-sanded strips of rough-hewn wood sprinkled throughout.
The food was an irksome mix of weird and bland, with some truly lovely bits here and there. Our server and her manager could not have been nicer or more willing to bring me something else when I sent my dinner plate back after only a few bites. All I wanted was distance between myself and that plate.
We ordered the guacamole and the empanadas from the vegan menu. Both were tasty, and the empanadas were perfectly fried. Then it got weird and bland.
The guac plate was very odd. A fine scoop of excellent guacamole was set adrift in a sea of what I can only describe as liquified guacamole. On one end of the plate, the tiniest--a soupçon would be an abundance in comparison--amount of an amazing, spicy salsa was drizzled on the surface of the sea.
I am most decidedly not in favor of liquid guacamole, no matter how it tastes. Why would anyone do that to a poor, innocent avocado? Oddly enough, I think an avocado foam would have been both welcome and appropriate. Go figure.
The empanadas were my personal favorite of the meal. The dough used fries up beautifully, and is crispy on the outside and delicate on the inside. It tasted like it might've been a blend of corn and wheat. The filling was yummy and not at all overpowered by the squash. I'm just not a fan of a super sweet squash. The empanadas are topped by that fabulous red sauce, but not near anything like enough of it.
The main courses were aggravating and strange. The picture is of their "fried pasta" dish. The only crispy pasta we noticed were these stalks of dried, uncooked spaghetti standing up in the middle of the mound of boiled spaghetti on the plate. My husband ordered this. There was a nice mix of veg, but the sauce was almost entirely without any sort of specific flavor. I ended up snacking on the dried pasta just for something to do.
I ordered the chile relleno. It was stuffed with some very lovely vegetables, all perfectly cooked: the poblano was gigantic and very nicely roasted, the vegetables inside were just the right amount of crunchy and soft, but I've had air with more seasoning and spice than that chile and its filling. A nut cheese was mentioned, but I failed to detect it. The red sauce--there was tons of it--was not that aforementioned amazing salsa I could eat a bucket of, as I'd hoped. It only tasted of sweetness, and also had vegetable oil pooling here and there in it. There were also well-cooked black beans and coconut rice. No seasoning or spice in the beans, and no coconut flavor to the rice.
I'm sure I am sounding harsh, but if you're going to name your restaurant after fire--multiple fires, at that--it seems like salt, pepper, and at least a few spices ought to go into everything you make. I got the sense that there was more care put into how a plate looked, pasta stalks aside, than how it tasted. I never send food back, and my husband was horrified, but give me a sloppy plate of super tasty food over something meant for display purposes only any day.
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