This is one of the first restaurants we ate at in Springfield, and honestly, it terrified us. Is this what food tastes like in Missouri? This is a local chain--local to Springfield--and there's like 5 or 6 of them spread around town. I know that locals like it. My friend Lance, who's from here, swears by it. I've heard Brad Pitt goes every time he's in town, because he grew up with it. Rachel P.'s review makes this defense, if you scroll down and read it. I get that. I'm not someone who doesn't understand local tastes, local traditions. I get that people go here when they're kids, eat it their whole lives, and this is just what food tastes like. Some people call that rooting for the home team. I call that settling.
For this local-hero model to work, the food still has to be good, and really, this isn't good food. It's sloppily prepared, the ingredients don't taste fresh. Ms. A's review--again, scroll down--sums it up: They don't have salsa or pico de gallo, but this sweet, runny sauce to put on their thick, burnt chips. Who doesn't want a basket of fresh tortilla chips and the joint's own salsa in a dish when they sit down at a Mexican restaurant? That's practically half the reason everyone goes to Mexican restaurants, to get that hot, fresh serving of chips and salsa as soon as they sit down. This place took forever just to get us the runny sweet sauce, and when we tried it, we wish they hadn't brought it.
The food is just sloppy. A burrito is more like a burrito than the salsa is like salsa, but it's very, very Americanized, almost like the put a cheeseburger in a blender and then wrapped that up in a tortilla. Everything we ordered was the same, paltry comparisons to actual Mexican food, seemingly made quickly by a first-time cook who doesn't know how to get the most of the ingredients, doesn't know how to prepare them. The enchiladas my wife had were, um, not enchiladas.
And on top of that, the service there is pretty poor, taking a long time to get food, to get drinks, with no smiles. The service is more snotty diner than sit-down restaurant, and really, who wants that?
Again, I see all these local people defending this food, talking about how they realize it's no Mexican, just a local taste. It reminds me of those people who defend their dog after it bites the umpteenth person: "Oh, he's just like that with strangers! He's really sweet to me!" Time to put the dog down. read more