| rev:text
| - Hit this place today with a couple of colleagues for lunch. Definitely a lot of hype going into it, and I'm always afraid I'll be underwhelmed when that's the case, but for the second time this week, I was actually presently surprised by yet another hole-in-the-wall that lived up to its reputation.
First off, this place gets busy in a hurry, so you'd do well to beat the lunch crowd if at all possible. In our case, we walked in around 11:30 and were barely able to get a table for ourselves in the far corner of the back room. The parking lot was packed to the brim when we left too, so if you plan to dine in, go early or expect to hunt for a spot and wait in line.
The ordering process here is a bit confusing, as others have noted, but we lucked out and had a very helpful (and super patient!) lady guide us through the process and write up the slips for us. Not sure if that's the norm, but that is some of the best customer service I've ever gotten when I've been new to a place and not sure of what I wanted to try (or in this case, how to order it). I don't know if that's the process now or what, but we would have surely been lost without someone to show us the ropes. Honestly, it's not a process the customers should have to do themselves and I can see where the frustration was coming from. With help it's easy to figure out how it works, the difference between the regular and combo and all the options, but to the uninitiated, it is definitely intimidating.
That's not to say it isn't rewarding once you have it down. There are tons of combinations and a slew of add on items, upgrades on the rice (chicken or beef fried, for example) and the option to have something thrown into a quesadilla instead of plopped on the plate. You definitely won't struggle to find something new to try here, because there is an insane number of potential combinations. Once you figure out what's going down, you get your ticket, take it to the other section of the counter and pay up, then they find you (by calling your name) and bring it out to your table when it's ready. Pretty easy once you get past the ordering part!
In our case, we tried the carnitas and the BBQ pork, and they were both excellent. Lots of flavor and paired well with chicken fried rice and their delicious black beans. They had awesome flavor and were some of the best refried beans I've ever had. Drinks were just regular soft drinks and self serve, which is actually something I prefer since you can top up whenever you need it. The food itself came out pretty quickly, even though they were already busy, and everything was exactly as specified. Considering the complexity of some of this stuff and the ordering process, I have to give them props for having it down to a science.
I will concede to a few points made by other reviewers regarding the cleanliness of the place, but to their credit, with the amount of folks coming in and out, it's not easy to get to the tables before someone else snaps up an open spot. You can see how this leads to a build up before it gets cleaned again. I did see folks doing their best to catch the open spots when there was time, and the soft drink areas was being regularly kept up and cleaned while we were there too.
The place is a divey, hole-in-the-wall operation, but it must be said that they do it well. I don't think it would have the same ambiance if it were anything else, to be honest, it's probably one of those places you either love or hate. That said, I'm firmly in the former camp and definitely plan to go back sometime soon. There's a steep learning curve to ordering your food, but if you go with someone that knows the ropes or get their before they're too busy, you'll probably have all the time and help that you need.
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