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| - Let me start off by saying this place advertises itself as the oldest Mexican restaurant in Toronto. There are plaques and awards for best Mexican in Toronto covering the walls of the breezeway. The service was excellent and it was very cozy inside. I really appreciate the late hours, too, as a long night out is great topped off with a fresh taco.
Canada, I love you. But what happened? Maybe I'm spoiled after spending so many years in Southern California and Texas. Hell even Colorado had very respectable Mountain Mex, rich in mole and verde.
This is the worst Mexican food I've ever had, short of a discount frozen enchilada tv dinner I ate once in a moment of hunger-driven weakness. I ordered a standard bean burrito with chili sauce. Simple. The sides were flavorless. No taste at all in the rice. The beans had chunks of dried up whole pinto bean and appeared to only have been fried once. Also flavorless. The salsa tasted like canned chopped tomatoes with a sprinkle of chili powder. The tortilla chips were stale.
The burrito itself was baked, for some unknown reason. The tortilla, fresh from its plastic packaging, was resultingly dry on top and mushy on the bottom. It was covered in barbecue sauce masquerading as mole. Inside were overcooked vegetables. One was green bell pepper, the other was so mushy I'm not certain if it was a carrot or a sweet potato, neither of which have any business in a bean burrito. There were a couple small blobs of mozzarella snuck in to random areas of the plate pretending to be cotija. They were like the leftover bolts from an IKEA furniture assembly. Unsure of where to put them, they hid them in random places hoping we wouldn't notice they weren't supposed to be there. We noticed. In spite of the distractingly bland flavor and the hunt for even a single jalapeƱo, we noticed.
Messing up Mexican is like messing up toast. It's so basic as to be impossible to ruin. But they somehow managed it Olympically. I'd be upset if I wasn't so impressed.
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