| rev:text
| - I have taken my family to this new restaurant twice. Oddly, dining options for Mexican food in this area are rather light. There is a Chipotle by the hospital (block away) and the more traditional Ajo Al's and Miguels about half a mile away. Those two restaurants are OK, but serve a traditional 'American' mexican food style dish - which, just seems old and tired.
We ate here with two adults and two kids. The restaurant is nicely decorated and comfortable, if not a little crowded. There is a very fun looking bar area and patio (but we sat in the dining area). We saw many people having cocktails and wine at the bar, which is not normally what you would see at a Mexican place, but, it tells you right off the bat that this is not traditional mexican where you either get a margarita or beer.
I am melding my two experiences together to give you a better sense. We tried:
Casarita - their house slushy margarita, which comes from a machine and tastes great. I had a floater of "prickly pear" liquor in it. I had two, and got my buzz on well. After I had two the waiter mentioned its a limit of 4 because they have a lot of booze in there.
Shop Special - this is a regular margarita on the rocks. Seemed good, not sour or tart.
Watermelon Fresca - they make this with booze, or without (I had the booze one). Holy cow this is a strong drink. Its water based, with chunks of watermelon - NOT a sweet candy drink. more like infused water. Interesting..... and strong..... and happy hour prices :-). I have never had a cocktail like this.... it felt... healthy in a way.
The food has some goods, and some medicare's. Chips and salsa is different - they tell you the first salsa is free. One night we tried the medium pineapple salsa. The salsa is not like the kind you get from the store. It looks hand chopped, and is not full of liquid. My kids loved this, but it seemed as mild as mild could be on the heat index. The second time we were there, we tried the Tomatillo, which is supposed to be Hot, but to me was medium. You have had hotter salsa, trust me. I am not sure if you can tell them to kick it up a bit. We went through two things of chips, and the one salsa lasted, but it doesn't feel the same without that endless bowl of tomato salsa - I guess I am a purest on that.
The menu is arranged almost like a mexican eatery - there are some full meals, but most feels like a la cart that you are building into a meal. For instance, my wife and I each had two tacos that ranged in price from $4-6 each, and a side of beans $2.50 and a side of cilantro rice $3. The total price of the meal was about the same as you would expect if it was all put together for you.
The taco's are quite large and stuffed, and pretty creative. We had (over two visits):
A baja taco (not sure if this is the name) - it has a MASSIVE chunk of beer battered fish in it. We ordered this twice because it was a huge value for money.
An El Pastor taco - ehhhhh, was fatty or something. I was thinking it was something different (but I ate it).
A veggie taco (not sure of the name) - now this was excellent. Usually the vegetarian dish is half assed in mexican places. This was portabella mushrooms and stuffed, and seasoned really well. I would do this again in a heartbeat.
A Barbacoa taco - yummy, can't go wrong
A Shrimp taco - also very good.
My kids ate off the kids menu. A quesadilla and bean burrito. The bean burrito was the best ever. and it was really large for a kid menu. If you don't know what to order, get this item (its on adult menu), you will thank me. Its not like any bean burrito you have ever had. My wife took the second half to lunch the next day. The kids were dismayed by "yucca" fries on the kid menu, which I thought was a kind of potato or something, but they were sweet potato fries (which the kids hate) so there ya go!
The sides we tried a bunch because they seemed cheap:
Cilantro rice. Really yummy - its bright green, and very well done. Could eat this by itself.
Two kinds of beans - don't remember the names. Both very good - well seasoned. I am not a bean person, but these I could eat over and over (they are not refried).
corn (which comes out as corn on the cob), on a skewer already buttered.
Apparently we were there on the first week, because there were some hiccups in the wait staff. Our child's food apparently had not been ordered, and we are the type of family that doesn't eat until its all on the table. The owner apologized profusely and brought out a free desert - it was a churro, but wasn't perfect or straight like the Disneyland kind. Everyone said they didn't want it, until we tried it. A fresh made churro is mind boggling good. I have never seen a desert like that on any menu, and it was so flipping yummy. It came with this lemon creme dipping sauce. I can't explain how interesting this was.
Its different, but not crazy different. We will be back.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)