Los Aztecas

[wolf]

As I mentioned in So, What's for Lunch, I went to dinner tonight at a Mexican restaurant in Pottstown, Penna. although honestly I have to describe it as Mexican-ish.

They have a lot of guys who look Mexican working there, are most of the food names include some exotically doubled ls and many of the ns have squiggles over them, to reinforce the notion that you are eating strange foods.

Although it's a sit-down table service restaurant, there is a fast food feel to everything. Nothing is delivered in a cardboard box, but it might as well have been. A few serapes and oversized hats, along with at least one depiction of the Mayan Calendar served as decor.

Sternly labelled bottles of sauce sit on the tables proclaiming "very hot." Yeah. Sure. I dumped about a tablespoon of the one with the scariest label onto a chip because the salsa was weak ... several of my dinner companions quaked in fear as I bit down on ... mildly smoky flavored nothing.

I ordered the "Special Dinner," one of the more expensive menu items at $12.50. There was a lot of food on the plate, but the presentation was no big shakes, not that there's much you can do to tart up a Chile Relleno ... a sad green heap of Guacamole quivered beneath a tomato slice on top of the chalupa, and the taco was soggy. The Mexican rice was dry and bland, and the diarrhetic offering of cheese topped refried beans was tasteless. I mean more tasteless than refried beans usually are.

The fried ice cream was as close to a highlight as I got ... the ball of vanilla ice cream was the size of two closed fists. Instead of the usual ice cream encased in a shell and then fried, the mega-ball was placed into a fried taco shell, squirted with whipped cream from a can, dusted lightly with cinnamon and drizzled with chocolate syrup. Now I love chocolate. But I have a fondness for the honey that used to be served with the Chi-Chi's version of fried ice cream. I like the way that it crystalizes on the cold parts and gets a little crunchy.

There was an upside ... while I was looking for directions to the place, I found an online coupon, so I got 15% off.

I won't be going back, unless it's a similar context, going with a group where I don't have a say in the choice of restaurant.

Maybe I'll try the crab quesadilla.