We travel quite a bit, and one of the things we always enjoy doing is finding a really good Mexican…read morerestaurant. We've had some wonderful Mexican food in our travels, and since moving to Sioux Falls we've kept hoping to find that one place here that really stands out.
Unfortunately, we're still looking.
We had high hopes for the new Plaza Azteca on the east side. It's a brand-new restaurant and certainly looks modern, but to us it wasn't particularly warm or inviting. The dining room is very open, with high ceilings and hard surfaces everywhere, including the concrete flooring. The result is a LOT of noise. Conversations, dishes, chairs and everything else seem to bounce around the room. When the restaurant gets busy, it becomes more echo chamber than dining room.
But atmosphere can easily be forgiven when the food is memorable.
This wasn't.
The chips and salsa usually give me my first impression of a Mexican restaurant, and these didn't exactly get things started on the right foot. The salsa was thin, watered down and surprisingly uninspired. The chips were equally forgettable--dry, generic and lacking that warm, freshly made quality that makes you keep reaching into the basket. They honestly reminded me of something poured out of a bag from the grocery store.
For our meals, we ordered the fajita chimichanga with rice and beans, along with an enchilada and taco combination with rice and beans.
When my chimichanga arrived, my first thought was, "That's a chimichanga?"
I'm accustomed to a chimichanga being this big, wonderfully stuffed, fried bundle that makes you wonder whether finishing the whole thing is a wise life decision. This one was flat and looked much more like a quesadilla. Unfortunately, the flavor didn't do much to redeem the presentation. It was simply mediocre.
The enchilada and taco combination wasn't much better. Another disappointment was the beef. Instead of the flavorful shredded beef we were hoping for, we got ground beef that was bland and didn't bring much character to either dish. Rice and beans were there, but nothing on the plate really jumped out and said, "You need to come back for this."
That's probably the best way I can describe the food here: it was food. It filled us up. Nothing was terrible enough that we couldn't eat it, but nothing was interesting, distinctive or memorable either. For Mexican food, especially, I want layers of flavor, seasoning, spice, freshness--something. This meal just seemed to coast along somewhere between bland and forgettable.
I do want to give credit where it is deserved. The service was very good. Our server was attentive, things moved quickly, and we were well taken care of. The staff was easily the strongest part of our visit.
I know plenty of people really enjoy Plaza Azteca, and maybe we simply ordered the wrong things. But based on this visit, it isn't the Mexican restaurant we've been searching for in Sioux Falls.
The search continues.
Two stars from us--one of them pretty much belongs to the service.
