Four of us enjoyed the Angry Cactus yesterday evening. We had a reservation for 7:15 and arrived about 10 minutes early and were greeted and seated immediately. The venue is reasonably impressive and the style fits. This is not a "Mexican food joint" in spite of the cactus reference. I believe some would take a cactus reference and assume that a name reflecting the southwest must be Mexican in some fashion.
We ordered appetizers and drinks which came quickly. The chips and salsa was quick along with their bread and dipping oil. Chips are ordered as an appetizer. We also ordered the shrimp and they came after a few moments. The salsas with the chips are green verde and red tomato. Both were good, but the red had a great, distinct flavor. The shrimp were fantastic.
I also had the prickly pear margarita, which was excellent.
Four different orders for us. The knife and fork burrito, the angry chicken, the chicken fried chicken and the salmon. Feedback was that the knife and fork burrito was very good, the angry chicken was excellent, the chicken fried chicken was good - but nothing extraordinary. I had the salmon with the sweet potato mash. If it was just the salmon, I would prefer my own. This was just a hair overdone. But, this isn't a seafood place. It was the combination of the salmon, the mash and the salsa that made the dish standout. I would rate it very good. I would try something different next time, but that's because their menu has many offerings. If they were out of something, I would readily order the salmon again. I'm not a sweet potato person so I asked to change the sweet potato mash to a garlic potato mash, but they failed to do that, so they corrected that and brought it separately in spite of my insistence that they didn't need to do that. What I found was that the sweet potato mash was great and blended perfectly with the salmon, salsa and sauce on the plate. The green beans were also very good. The presentation on all the plates was really great.
So all things considered, the food pretty much a 5/5 rating. It took a few moments longer than we liked, but we had appetizers, bread and drinks to keep us busy.
The decor, ambience, noise level, table spacing, etc. was excellent.
Our server, Naomi (sp) was extraordinary. She didn't hardly miss a beat and was very attentive and did a good job of answering questions.
Angry Cactus is upscale, but not stuffy in the least. It's not going to be an every night event for us because the price is appropriate for the offerings, but we'll be back. read more