I could not help myself from blogging about this restaurant. I was invited to a friend's birthday party at this restaurant, and when I visited their website I thought I would be in for a treat. The place looked hip and authentic and the menu did its best to imply that Mexicans were in some way involved in the cooking. The prices were slightly higher as well, which is reassuring when you are looking for quality. I love Mexican food and often cook it at home, what a wonderful thing it would be if there were a good Mexican eatery in Sotton.
I must confess that this was the last good memory I have about this place, cos from the moment we went through the door things were not good. I have no idea how long the restaurant had been there, but the furniture was tired, the tables were tired, and the cleanliness was what I would describe as 'pubby'. Sticky tables, dodgy glasses... you know the drill.
One of the funnier things was the banquette than ran along the back wall. It was quite shallow, and something about the cushion meant that you slowly slipped forwards in way that seemed it could only end with you on the floor under the table. After tangoing with this for a while and well and truly working my gluts, my calves were queasy and I'd had enough. As much as I might be in need of a good work out, it was interfering with my ability to have a normal conversation, so I swapped places with my finance (a far more tolerating soul) who had the fortune of being on a chair.
Although we were not a huge party, they insisted in us pre-ordering our food. This led me to think that the food must be wonderfully fresh and labour intensive, but boy was I wrong. I had tortilla soup to start and it was bland and pointless, but not offensive.
The main courses were interesting, as it didn't seem to matter what you ordered, it came with small black plastic cups of guac and salsa. I love guac AND salsa, but neither of these substances had been made that day, or necessarily that week. When I make these things at home I make them right before I serve, so that they are fresh and zingy. The restaurant version brought images of great big long life vats of salsa and guac to mind... Yuck. I barely touched the food.
One thing that I did start to eat was the side order of chilli popcorn, which to my disgust was filled half way with oil. I need you all to know, this was not a drizzled chilli infused olive oil, this was the frying fat oil, and as I poured it into a glass to photograph I wretched at the thought that I had eaten anything that had come out of the same kitchen.
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| The offending bucket of popcorn. |
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| The glass of cooking oil that I poured out of the bucket. Try not to forget that this is only what I poured out, obviously there is still some in the popcorn, and the popcorn had been soaking in this for at least 30 minutes that I knew of. |
