I stopped by to try the recently-opened El Agave, and I'm glad I did. The food is very good, full of flavor and from my limited experience, appears to be quite authentic Guatemalan style cooking. The food reminded me of the now-closed El Nayar, which I enjoyed very much, and used to be on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville. There is a lot of attention paid to the quality of the food here, that's evident. For starters, the very sweet waitress brought me tortilla chips and salsa. The chips were overly salty and tasted as if they were shaken from a bag, but the salsa was an immediate hit with my tongue. It tasted fresh and was really bursting with flavors. For my meal, I got the Steak and Chicken Fajitas, Chorizo Street Tacos, and a Pork Tamale. Everything looked and tasted great. The Tamale was really excellent. That being said, there are a couple things that do detract from the experience. Opening a restaurant is a very detail-oriented thing. The food may be great, but if the restaurant isn't comfortable, then it doesn't matter how good the food is. A few things kept me from giving El Agave a 5 star review.. On the night I went it was a cold, with a temperature in the 40s; not miserably cold. But, seated at the table, my feet and lower legs were freezing the entire time because the hoods in the kitchen were sucking air in from the dining room, and that means it was coming in the front door and blowing across the dining room floor, and as a result, my feet and legs. The heat was on, but it didn't do anything except keep my upper body warm. I pulled both of my feet up into the booth and sat on my calves. It was that bad. Note to El Agave: Fix this. You need to put doors on the kitchen entrance and make sure your kitchen hoods have a return air unit and USE IT. Yes, that makes the kitchen cold, but do you want no returning customers? I'd have come back every couple weeks, but now I will not return until spring. Whatever it takes, you must correct this before spring. The other thing is the portion size. When the Fajitas arrived I was a bit taken aback that it was not really a big plate of sizzling steak, onions, and peppers like you get at many other places. Usually, it's all I can do to eat it all, but in this case if I hadn't ordered more food I'd have still been hungry. It was literally a handful of beef and a handful of chicken. On top of that, you only get two tortillas with it which is not nearly enough, so I ordered 4 more. The plate of beans and rice it comes with is likewise small, with only enough of each for a few spoonfuls. Rice and beans are cheap, and I'd have expected much more of each. You might want to order extra if you like them. The interior looks very nice, if not a bit bright and sparsely decorated. The nicely appointed booths and tables have ugly paper table numbers taped on the wall over each one, cheapening the look of them. Please memorize your table numbers and get rid of these taped-on tags! Also, a little decorating would go a long way. There's a flashing menu board that constantly changes colors and is very annoying.
Other than these few drawbacks, I can certainly recommend El Agave. If they make these changes, I see no problem with them being a Catonsville mainstay, and I'll up my review to 5 stars! read more