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| - The Northeast is bereft of good Mexican food, much to the dismay of Little Brother and I, who reside in Boston and New York respectively and have nicknamed each other "Salsa." So when Little Brother and I took a trip to Arizona in February, we vowed to eat Mexican food at least once a day, every day of our five day stay in the Sunshine State.
One day we were in the car, looking for a place to eat when we saw a sign for Pancho's Mexican Buffet. Little Brother and I were smitten instantly and demanded to stop there ASAP. Apparently we were the only ones in our family who had such amorous feelings for Pancho's. We begrudgingly ate somewhere else but the next day Little Brother and I borrowed the rental car from our mom and headed to Pancho's for lunch, accompanied by our cousin who shared our good taste.
When we got inside I paid less than $25 for three people to eat at the all you can eat buffet. And that includes drinks. I felt smug. Only at Pancho's could this public interest lawyer treat two people to a sitdown meal without having to mentally recalculate how much her net worth had gone down as a result of the expenditure.
Our eyes were bugging out at all the choices. Four different kinds of enchiladas, refried beans, rice, burritos, chips and salsa, fajitas, ice cream, sopapillas, among many other food items.
Pancho's combines the gluttony and endless choices of the all you can buffet with the hospitality of a sit down restaurant. You fill up your plate at the buffet and sit down to eat. If you need seconds (or in my case, thirds) you raise a miniature Mexican flag at your table, signalling to the server that you need something. You then tell the server what you want from the buffet and they'll bring it back for you. I'm suspicious of this setup; Pancho's website makes it sounds like the server is there to enhance patrons' experience but I feel like this is a tactic to curtail the amount of food that people eat. In the time it took the server to bring me a second plate of enchiladas, I could have already been working on a third of taquitos, had I been able to make a return trip to the buffet on my own. The same thing goes for the fact that you don't help yourself to the food at the buffet but are served by Pancho's employees who stand behind the counter. But I digress; don't want to give the impression that poor Jeanne didn't get enough to eat. We enjoyed our lunch at Pancho's so much that the next night, we casually suggested Pancho's once again for a family dinner, hoping the rest of our family had forgotten that Pancho's had been vehemently vetoed a day earlie. Unfortunately our family members weren't dumb enough for that.
When I got back to New York I immediately when to Pancho's website, eager to see if there was a Pancho's nearby. Too bad for me and Little Brother; Pancho's restaurants are located only in Arizona, New Mexico, Arizona and Louisiana. On days when I feel overwhelmed at work and disillusioned with the criminal justice system, I dream about a second career as the proud owner of a Pancho's restaurant. If I can't bring justice to my clients, maybe I can bring Pancho's to the Northeast.
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