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| - My English 1 teacher gave out an assignment to visit a new restaurant and write a review of it. Since my wife and I have already been to virtually every affordable restaurant on the east side, finding a place to write about was a bit of a challenge, but after scouring Google, I found this tiny Mexican place just off East Washington. When we pulled up, we were immediately put off by the lack of decor and cheap, worn furnishings that looked like they'd come secondhand from an office's break room, but I had a grade to earn, so we forged ahead. The place initially appeared to be empty, but after we walked in a server appeared from the back.
The menus consisted of printed pages in the heavy plastic booklets typical of small diners, and provided virtually no information about the meals beyond names and prices. Feeling only slightly adventurous, my wife ordered something mysterious called pambazo, but asked for chicken rather than the chorizo the server suggested. I decided to play it safe and ordered the mole; though I've never had it as a dish by itself, at least I've had meals including mole sauce before. The server explained to me in Spanish peppered with English that they were out of chicken, but he could make it with beef instead. "Is good," he assured me.
Our food arrived in surprisingly short order. Pambazo turned out to be a giant sandwich-thing featuring shredded chicken, a crumbly white cheese and vegetables on puffy bread. The chicken was bland and watery and the vegetables shriveled -- both obviously came out of a can -- but the tasty bread saved the dish.
The mole came on a wide plate with a huge hunk of beef drowned in the thick brown mole sauce at one end, a pool of runny, bland refried beans on the other, and a thin strip of white rice down the middle. Additionally, a stack of tiny corn tortillas were kept warm in a container on the side.
The mole itself was pretty good; the beef was tender and shredded easily under my fork, and the sauce had a rich, earthy flavor with just a hint of bitterness. However, I'm not sure what I was supposed to do with the tortillas. Though the thick, warm tortillas you have with butter before a meal at Pedro's came to mind, there was nothing to put on these and they were thin and oddly dry. I decided to try making little mole taco/burrito-things out of them, but they were so small that if I tried to wrap up more than a bite at a time it got pretty messy.
When we were full, there was still enough food on our plates to get an entire second dinner out of it. Our waiter had left the building sometime during our meal, so I wandered back to the counter to find someone who could get us to-go boxes. The only other person there was the cook, who was occupied way in the back of the kitchen, but there was a tall stack of styrofoam boxes next to the register. I helped myself to two of them.
After boxing up our leftovers, there was nothing left to do but pay and leave. This is the part that every business truly lives for, and it's the one part that they almost never get wrong; no matter how poor the service is, you can always count on them being happy to take your money. Sadly, this was the restaurant's biggest failure. Wherever the server wandered off to, he still hadn't returned. I went up to the counter and managed to get the cook's attention, but he showed no interest in taking my money, only assuring me "he'll be right back", presumably referring to the server. He returned to the back of the kitchen and placed a phone call. We stood around and waited for several minutes. I was about ready to just guesstimate the bill and leave cash on the table when our server finally returned.
The prices are comparable to Pedro's or other similar Mexican restaurants, but the food is merely adequate, and both the atmosphere and service are practically non-existent. While I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to giving them a second chance, given the number of restaurant options in the area, I doubt I ever will.
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