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| - At La Paz, I was so ready for some fresh Mexican food with interesting flavors. What I got was generous portions of stuff that mostly tasted like it came out of a can or a freezer with perhaps a quick pass through a microwave. Yuck. No bright, bold favors, with the exception of the smoky salsa, which was interesting. Just blandness, flavorlessness, and dried-out or mushy textures. Way below-average food quality was saved from one star by the apparent cleanliness and décor newness.
It was about 5:30 p.m. on Friday, the day after the 2013 Fourth of July. I took my elderly mom out for a rare restaurant dinner. When we arrived, the restaurant was almost deserted--always a bad sign! Because of mom's wheelchair, we were seated in the huge third room that was made up entirely of tables with hard, echo-y surfaces everywhere. The room cried out for a little fabric or something soft to make it cozier and more inviting; this had the ambiance of a cold, whistling airport waiting area.
We were alone in there, except for the two people at an appealing-looking outside table who were soon forced in by a rainstorm. It took them three trips to empty their table themselves and decamp to the inside--with zero help from the not-to-be-found wait staff. We felt pretty neglected, too. They never did fully set up our table -- I finally got up and commandeered some salt and pepper from another table about 3/4 of the way through the dinner.
The relatively short, plastic-coated menu had some appealing-sounding entries that had us psyched -- char-grilled chicken with mango salsa, coconut rice, and black beans, for example. I was also intrigued by the Mexican Flag enchiladas, which were supposed to be three types of enchiladas covered in three different sauces representing the colors of the Mexican flag. Yum, right?
Uh, no.
When the food first arrived after a reasonable but longer-than-we-expected wait, mom tried to send it all back. She was right, but I intervened and we listlessly ate it all. As I write this, my tummy feels like it is loaded with lead. Ugh....
First, the coconut rice had been replaced with a truly awful-tasting, mushy excuse for Spanish rice. "Where is the coconut rice? Coconut rice is the reason we ordered this dish," we said. "Oh, we are out of coconut rice," the waitress explained without apology. We think substituting food without asking us first is a major no-no.
Then, the food on both plates didn't look good. The bite of chicken mom tasted was hard to chew, and she said it tasted miserable. I thought it was okay but flavorless. It was one of those massive chicken breasts that had been portion-reduced by horizontally slicing (not pounding) the chicken to make a thin piece with a huge footprint. There was maybe a teaspoonful of presumably-bottled mango salsa that was amazingly flavorless on the obviously-not-marinated, flavorless chicken.
The refried beans were heaped in a stiff vertical stack at least three inches tall and visually similar to the cliffs of Dover, with that fresh-from-the-can flavor. At least the tea tasted good, and there were some tasty bits of steak in the enchiladas.
Alas, the enchiladas sat too long under heat lamps before service.The enchiladas may once have had sauce on them, but once served, no sauce remained at all-- just a bit of dried coloration on top. Above that was a thin layer of dried-out cheese--cheddar(?) on one and white cheese on the other two. The Mexican flag idea was completely lost. We ordered little dishes of the missing sauces and poured some velveeta-like melted cheese over top of the rice to make it edible and soldiered on.
A $15 Mexican entree should be vastly better than this. With tip, our check exceeded $40 (no drinks other than tea, no appetizers, and no dessert) - an amount that should have allowed us to eat pretty well at many much better restaurants. Mom and I will not be back to La Paz.
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