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| - I"m feeling a little tepid about this place. People just rave about how good the food is and so I expected to be totally wowed. Not so. We walked in around 7:00pm on a Saturday night and we were told it would be an hour wait. Okay, we hunkered down for the long haul. It was actually more like half an hour before we were shoehorned into a long table in the back room with a lovely view of the ladies room and what appeared to be a storeroom.
The artwork is quite interesting and provides contrast to what otherwise appears to be a dining room transported out of a tiny village in Mexico. It was hot and loud and being hearing impaired, mostly just a wall of indistinguishable sound. Our server was nice and efficient, getting margaritas for the others and for me, as the DD, iced tea. There was one tiny corner of a wedge of lemon in my tea, but fortunately, the well-appointed salsa bar had more.
Speaking of the salsa bar, that was the highlight for me. The first time I've ever had a strawberry-chile salsa and it was delicious. I had several of the mini-cups with the abundant and fresh tortilla chips. I also had a peanut salsa that tasted like a sambal, but with a nice, slow burn. Again, a very tasty salsa. There were about ten other salsas and they all appeared fresh and very popular.
The menu is like a regional loop through Mexico, and I found that very cool. There were regional specialties with a local twist like Mole, Tinga, Cochinita Pibil, and fish tacos. There was also a variety of vegetarian/vegan options that appealed to the veggies in my group. I couldn't stray from a "burro norteno" that was a combination of beans, rice, potato and green chile pork. I wish there was more green chile pork in it, and it was a bit dry, but flavorful.
Yeah, I plan to go back some night with my wife who is a vegetarian, and perhaps something will trigger that spark so that I can rave about it like everybody else.
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