While I recommend this location and fully support this new business my review is kinda limited and not what I hoped it would be.
I fully expected to be writing a glowing report on the tamales I bought. My heart was over joyed when I dashed in simply to buy a bag of chips and discovered the cart of Fresh Hot and marvelously aromatic Tamales near the Check Out lanes. I decided to get Pork and was filling a styrofoam box as an employee approached to top off the tamales. She was friendly but did not speak English as she offered me steaming hot ones. I asked ..."are they Pork?" She smiled and shrugged.... I asked "Puerco?" She smiled nodding and helped place three into my heavy box.
The other options were beef, which there were two trays full of those, and there had been only one tray of pork and at the far right there was a cheese and chili variety .
I'm not sure if the Tamales or mixed up in the cart or if the employee didn't understand and gave me cheese and chili. But when I got home, I had both it wasn't a big deal. It was just not what I had expected. Because it's a self service station it's entirely possible that customers may have mixed up the different also. I'm striking it up to be a mystery. Unfortunately, it left a really bad taste in my mouth about this new business. I've eaten at the del Sol on fourth and 16th, but all I had was the lunch and I loved it.
The big part of my complaint is the flavor of the pork tamales . Something smelled off to me. Part of it might be that I was expecting the port to be in a red sauce, but it was a green sauce and quite frankly it tasted as though someone had drained a bunch of liquid from a can of Ortega green chilies into the meat mixture.. It was unexpected a bit on the sour side. At first, I thought the meat was bad, and maybe it was maybe that was part of the problem. I'm not sure. Some of the tamales in my package were pork which tasted horrible and a few were cheese and peppers, which tasted good. and quite frankly I've never had a pork tamale that terrible before. I've had chicken tamales now and then which were made with green chili and love them. All I know is these tasted sour!
i'm a native Arizona. And I've made pork tamales myself. So I'm not a newcomer and I'm not from a part of the country that doesn't have excellent tamales.
Anyway, obviously for a variety of reasons I'm not going to give a great review based on my experience at the store and the product. read more