Depth Fried

A few months ago I had a chimichanga at Los Agaves and made a noted mention that I would have to go back to Chilango's and see if their chimi is as good as it used to be. Chilango's used to be a regular feasting locale for our gang back in the 90s, generally as a post climbing or pre-debauchery meal, and they had what was by far the best chimichanga in town. For whatever reason, mainly because I got older and began to avoid State Street as if it was festering night and day with flesh craving zombies, I stopped going to Chilango's and have probably only been there 2 or 3 times in the last 8 years.

But today Deb and I found ourselves downtown for a Sunday afternoon movie. Hungry. Walking past Chilango's.
And we went in.

Chilango's was always a typical taqueria.......this is no longer the case. I'm not sure when they re-did the decor, or more importantly, why, but somebody was on a little too much peyote dust when they decided that what a Mexican taqueria on State Street needs is to have a little bit more of a 'modern' look. It's like someone opened up Architectural Digest and found one of those glass houses with the Jiffy Lube roll-up doors, looked at the interior photos of weird art, odd chairs and tables and said, "Now that's the kind of shit that makes me hungry for fat burritos." With a little 'stacked firewood' wall art motif thrown in (yes, firewood....?????). And some unfinished plywood seats. The place looks straight up fucking weird. Basically somebody had their head up their ass when the re-model decision was made. A smart man would've taken a picture to illustrate my point. Also, the once grand salsa bar that took up a good portion of the south wall was now relegated to a tiny table in the corner, so tiny I almost missed it.

All of this got me frightened right away, cause I'm figuring, "Ok, some complete fucking tosser bought this place and turned it into a wank-fest."

Well, enough about how ridiculous the place looks inside....we ordered a chicken chimichanga to share. At $8.95 - completely reasonable, and only $1 more than my breakfast at El Bajio on Friday (the worst breakfast burrito I've ever been served, you'll here plenty about that at a later posting). Figuring that since the food might have taken a turn for the worst, I'd cut my losses and ordered a Dos Equis draft...at FIVE bones. Not $4.50 or $4.75. But $5.00. I can't remember the last time I paid that much for a beer that wasn't at a concert venue or the ballpark...but I guess this is State Street and they try to rook the late night drunks, thereby screwing the daytime patrons. Another reason I rarely set foot downtown anymore.

Back to the chimichanga. It came out looking pretty close to the same as it used to, complete with the black plastic plates that I remember, a beautiful crisply fried burrito split down the middle with big dollops of sour cream, guacamole and pico de gallo placed next to it. Holy shit it was good. The chimi at Los Agaves (everyone's new favorite restaurant in SB, Mexican or otherwise) is pretty good, but Chilango's doesn't have a damn thing to worry about, they are still the absolute KING of this dish until someone can prove otherwise (to me at least). The thing is, I can't even pin down one thing that makes it so much better than others. There's something delightful about their chicken for sure....however I don't think the regular chicken burritos are anything super special. There's also something about the tortilla, but once again, I've had their non-fried burrito's and while they're good, I'm not writing new Psalms in their favor. So maybe it's the oil they fry it in...or how long...?? I don't know, and I don't particularly care. You can't imagine how happy I was that with the absurdity of the decor, the ingredients for greatness hadn't changed.

I'll be back. And sooner next time. But I might try to get away with BYOB.

Taqueria El Bajio

I don’t relish writing this review, but something really has to be said about this place. I’ve eaten here a number of times over the years and on top of being the most ridiculously expensive taqueria in town, the food always sucks. Always. So I went there today with low expectations, because I was hungry and tight on time and felt I needed to get this place off my Super Asada checklist. And, go figure, my 8 dollar regular (meaning ‘not super’) chicken burrito sucked. It lowered even my lowest expectations. How a restaurant can make food suck so badly so consistently I’ll always wonder. On the upside, everyone that works his is always super nice. Perhaps kindness is the only way to get tips in the jar, cause they can’t make any extra from quality.

If anyone eats here and has something they like, for the love of Jehovah, please, please tell me what it is.
So I can tell you that you’re wrong.

La Colmena

If you drive down Milpas just past Montecito Street there's the obvious 'weird' building sitting between two equally weird streets. For many years it was the home of Pavlako's, a Greek restaurant which I never saw anyone eat in, never ate there myself and was fully convinced was a front for some sort of large narcotics operation. Well, eventually Pavlako's went under and The Cajun Kitchen moved in, under the guise that what this neighborhood really needed was a restaurant that has no parking and serves really, really average food. Not surprisingly, there weren't enough cops in the neighborhood to keep the place up and running so it went under rather quickly. The building then sat empty for a while until a couple months ago when La Colmena opened it's doors with a small menu of tacos, alambres and quesadillas.

Now I was pretty happy about this place opening up, mainly because it would be the closest Mexican food to my office that's not El Bajio. You see, somehow I ended up with a job just off the Mexican food haven of Milpas Street but 200 feet away from this fine city's worst over-priced taqueria. (This posting isn't about El Bajio so I'll bag on them another day). But the idea of a new place that was almost the same distance away was very exciting. So I went a few times right off the bat and unfortunately, it just wasn't anything great, although definitely not bad, and a shitload better than El Bajio at a fraction of the price. I've been sticking with the tacos, trying different styles, but it's so hard to rave on a place that's obviously trying to be a sort of "East Side Lily's" and is so far from it. The tacos at Lily's are like a gift from the gods, sent down to the mortals and blessed by Argentinean supermodels. The tacos at La Colmena aren't really a gift from the gods, they're just a gift from whatever animal sacrificed their flesh for me to get some calories at lunch.