| rev:text
| - It's been awhile since I've eaten here for lunch, let alone eating here for dinner.
Therefore, since we were in the Tempe area attending a symposium, and had to stop by Fry's Electronics; we decided to give this place a try since it was just across Baseline Road, and it was already past 9PM.
The entrance, the bridge over the mini pond, the patio, and the overall exterior appearance was just very inviting. We were encouraged that this may turn out to be a good spontaneous choice for this evening late dinner.
When we entered, the hostess greeted us and notified us that there would be a 15-20 minute wait. Although there were plenty of available tables as it was later in the evening, and the place wasn't really that busy; we chalked it up to just standard operating procedure in preparation prior to guests being seated.
It didn't really take that long for them to buzz us, and guide us to our seats. The hostess provided us with two menus, and then the adventure began.
When we started perusing the two page menu, it appears that whomever used these last had poured remnants of salsa and minute pieces of chips onto this menu, as it was all over the backside of both mine and my wife's. We had to quickly grab and use the napkins we had to clean ourselves up from the annoying mess. We flagged down our server, Marcia, and she graciously apologized, and quickly gathered up cleaner menus.
Upon returning, she informed us that she would get us chips and salsa (we could've eaten the ones that were on the menus, but that would be gross and there wasn't enough of it anyway =) ).
However, she got busy, and in passing, she informed us that one of the other servers would do so. That did not happen, and when she realized that we still hadn't gotten what she promised us, she went ahead and took care of it and took our order.
Now, here's the quandary with this place at night. I am a firm believer in romantic candle lit dinner places, as long as there is enough ambient light from "somewhere" (including a well lit candle) so as to be able to read the menu. Such was not the case here. It was dimly lit in certain areas that I had to use my cell phone's flashlight app to provide enough lighting so that we could read our menus and know what to order.
Now, if you think that this was an anomaly, and we were just being particular about this. The 3 separate groups of new arrivals on the other side of the room did the same exact thing as we did. The gentlemen who sat alone across from us had to walk across the room to get enough lighting to read his bill. And Marcia, our server, had pull out her phone to light up ours and other guests' bills to verify the total. Not sure what is going on here, but a little bit more spot lighting in certain places would go a long way to solving this minor annoyance. In any case, this is the reason why I have no pictures as I ran down my phone's battery to light up the menu.
I had the shredded beef burro (enchilada style), and a shredded beef taco. My wife had the Chimichanga.
The flavor wasn't bad, but we've had better. However, after a long day of sparse sustenance, we were famished enough that we were able to consume our meails.
I had the flan for dessert. It was too sweet for my taste, and it didn't have enough caramel on top. It tasted like it was pre-packaged.
All in all, it was a mediocre experience that didn't start out well, but ended on a slightly higher note which is why this review is 3 stars, and not 2 - especially with the miscue on the salsa filled menus. Someone should really be checking these before handing them out to guests. I thought that is what the hostesses were supposed to do. Perhaps, I am mistaken.
Marcia, our server, was just very efficient and she managed to recover what could've been a disastrous experience for us.
In any case, it was a beautiful night, and had beautiful company; so I never did mind too much the missteps of this place.
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