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| - First, let me say that I really WANTED to like Barrio Cafe and will return in the hopes that our visit was a really off night.
However, my first visit was hugely disappointing. Service was fair-to-good. The music was great, even if misplaced. The food was a major let-down.
As others have noted, our dinner started with a bread and a sort of Mexican-inspired tapanade. It was a nice alternative to chips and salsa.
For dinner we split an order of Tacos de Tinga and then she had the Torta de Mole and I had the Cochinita Pibil. As we understand it (based on a combined 27 years of living in Mexico), tinga is usually a chicken dish cooked with either chipotles or chorizo and a LOT of onion. The sauce is created as a result of the cooking and is usually a nice mix of spicy and sweet (the sweetness coming from the onion). At Barrio Cafe, our experience was with what appeared to be chicken breast that was cooked on the grill or in a pan and then tossed in a sort of sweet sauce with no hint of either chorizo or chipotle and it was completely missing the sweet reduced onion flavor. Further, the tacos were served with a salsa that did not complement the meat at all.
My Cochinita Pibil was completely underwhelming. The achiote used was not nearly strong enough, and the meat was overcooked. Thankfully it was half-price for the restaurant's anniversary. Perhaps the full-price version actually tastes like Cochinita Pibil. It should also be noted that the pickled red-onion was lacking flavor and the puree (of potato?) was difficult to identify.
My wife's dish was equally strange. The Torta de Mole started off promising. The actual mole sauce had a nice taste to it. Unfortunately, the chicken had been cooked without the sauce (that's twice, see a trend here?) and did not have any flavor of its own. The bread the torta was served on was probably the best part of the meal. The fries (fries with a torta? OKAY) were seasoned with something we couldn't put our finger on and accompanied by a lazy ketchup that had something, maybe chipotle or achiote?
We skipped dessert. For our money, we'd rather get tacos at La Condessa or La Frontera (both on the same street).
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