This restaurant is a little hard to find, but it's few doors down from Ace Hardware in the same strip of businesses. It's near where I live, so I hoped it would be good. Turns out, it's worth a visit if you like good Mexican food even if you have to travel a few miles.
Fresh chips and salsa are put on the table after seating. The menu is not overstuffed, but it had a little more variety than we expected. No one in my family opted for one of the larger and complex dinners on a featured part of the menu. Instead we ordered from a page with more standard Mexican dinners.
Our three orders were an enchilada dinner with refried beans and rice, a chicken breast smothered in a poblano pepper cream sauce with refried beans and rice, and a plain quesadilla for our youngest family member. Our two dinners were easily above average in quality and flavors for a small Mexican Restaurant, and the quesadilla got a thumbs up from our youngest gradeschooler. The sauces of the two dinners had unique and wonderful flavors. The poblano sauce on the chicken breast was smooth and had a rich, creamy flavor. Not over-salted and not spicy hot. The chicken was tender. This chicken breast-with-sauce dinner was split with our other gradeschooler, who surprisingly enjoyed whatever got on the sharing plate. The Enchilada dinner I chose also happened to have a green poblano sauce, but a different one than was on the chicken breast. This sauce had more spice and a somewhat different texture and set of flavors. Very nice if you like just a little spice. I've never had these sauces before.
Our bland-loving child enjoyed the plain cheese quesadilla. There were other options for quesadillas. It would be nice if quesadillas made it onto the children's menu, which was brief.
Some of the other dinners that were on the menu had more typical sauces. As I recall, two or three have a mole (brown) sauce. I've had good and bad mole sauces at other restaurants, and this menu described ingredients that made these mole sauces sound very interesting and I nearly ordered one. Someone in the kitchen knows what they're doing, and they're not sleepwalking through the cooking.
The atmosphere is nice and clean. Festive and interesting decorations hang from the walls and ceiling. The tables are on the low end, but I think I only noticed that because I was starting to think I'd write a review of the place and started looking around like a snobby critic for a minute.
We had a nice time. The dinners are not expensive and are not off-the-charts odd or ground-breaking. With this one good experience, I'd say this place puts some nice little twists into the entrees that make the food more interesting and good. The rice that came with the dinners had more flavor than the rice that is served at most Mexican restaurants. I liked it, and so did everyone else at the table.
I've never been a big fan of refried beans. I gave them a quick taste and they seemed very ordinary to me. I will fault them for tasting like refried beans.
Drinks: We ordered one margarita, one beer, and two bottles of Jarritos pop (one pineapple, one punch--and there are other flavors). As I recall, the beer selection consists of Bud, Bud Light, and 5 or so Mexican beers. The drinks were good.
The atmosphere was okay to good and the food was easily better than expected. A nice little surprise. Four stars. read more