I spent most of my birthday this year on a plane. We did eat a late dinner at Huck Finn in Oak…read moreLawn, Illinois, but my parents wanted to celebrate my (and Marlene's) belated birthday(s) with, well, Tom and Marlene, so my parents asked me to pick a spot.
I love finding good places that Tom and Marlene haven't been. At first, I thought this was the Mexican restaurant on the south side of McKinley Street, but that one is long gone. I believe it was was called Cancun--or was it Acapulco? In any case, we drove separately because Tom and Marlene had some of their typical do-gooding to do, and I was a little surprised at how late they were. Well, they had gone to a takeout version of Puerto Vallarta (the same business?) located near where that other old closed Mexican restaurant was, but on the north side of McKinley.
In any case, Puerto Vallarta--the real one tucked way behind a secret strip mall with this weird fire lane between the first line of parking spots and the storefront curb itself--is a great place.
The menu is pretty vast for a sit-down Mexican restaurant in South Bend, and it's not just different versions and combinations of the same items, although you can seemingly get anything as part of a combination plate. The service is excellent and attentive. It was very busy when we came, and we were seated right when a lot of other people were seated, so our food did take a long time, but it wasn't ridiculously long, and our server continually stopped by to let us know what was happening and to refill water and complimentary chips.
There are two or three dining rooms total, and we were seated in the one to the right as you walk in the door. I'm glad we weren't seated in the main (?) central room, because that's where they had a speaker on one of the tables playing music very loudly. I thought this would annoy me, but when you're in one of the other rooms, the music is at a reasonable volume. I guess their method is cheaper than actually installing a sound system throughout the restaurant, but I don't know who actually sits in that main room, because it was empty when we entered and had only two parties dining when we left.
There was basketball on the TV when we were here, but the volume was turned off, and they have what looks like an antenna service without an actual antenna, so the broadcast was constantly dropping out for long periods during the entirety of our dinner. I wasn't interested in watching, so I didn't care, but if you're coming here to watch a game, you will be torturing yourself.
Our dining room was festive and fun. It was also reassuring to see so many Latino families eating here and to hear them speaking Mexican-accented Spanish. I grew up in Southern California and have lived in the Golden State most of my life; I never judge a Mexican restaurant by who's eating inside it at home, but in the Midwest? Yup, Mexican restaurants get the same treatment as Chinese restaurants everywhere: The more Chinese people you see eating at the restaurant, the better the restaurant. It's also nice to see how many more Latinos there are in Michiana than when I lived there.
