Thursday, June 28, 2007

F. J. & L. Too vs... Chevy's?

Chevy's > Frankie, Johnny and Luigi's Too, and I'll tell you why. People suck. What kind of God complex drives the manager of a 2nd rate Italian restaurant to pull a power trip of such little value? The same kind that gets you burned to a crisp while defending your "ideals" in an FBI standoff.

So manager Koresh was a pain in my balls from the getgo, and i should have picked up on the clues immediately. "You can't sit our party until all 11 of us are there? A number of us will be showing up much later."

"I'm sorry sir, we can't sit you until you're all her."

If you ever here this, simply say "No thanks." If someone running a restaurant thinks they can benefit from having their patrons not ordering drinks and appetizers - so be it. Stupidity is rampant. Let them be stupid and spend your money elsewhere.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Taqueria Margaritas

On occasion you just need to get out of the building. I consider myself a driven individual, it just happens that my drives are sex and food. I'm sure this goes for most, but few admit to such barbaric standards. With conflicting schedules and recent surgery, nooners are few are far between. Thus I settled for some easy Mexican, and this one was on a plate ready to be swallowed. You can insert a horrific pun here about a south of the border prostitute, but it'd be more fun for you to piece it together, and somehow also include the plate.

Taqueria Margaritas On El Camino in Mountain View is your standard hole-in-the-wall filled with dusty orange-vested Mexicanos between 11 and 2. This is a defining sign of guaranteed satisfaction of your hunger urges. If you can find a large percentage of indegineous people enjoying the menu, you're pretty much guaranteed at the first bite to either quiver with enjoyment, or at the worse end, convulse with nausea. Since the worst things at a Taqueria are just unusual parts of the cow like the tongue or brain, you can at least find comfort that all the meat in your burrito came from the same cow.

With that, i walked in with a few friends from work looking forward to some carne asada. One of the basic staples of Mexican Cuisine, carne asada is available in abundance, but rarely done right. It can be prepared in any standard fair; tacos, burritos, nachos, quesadillas, as well as the more unusual like sopas or like they can do at Margaritas served with a straw to snort. Here is it cut very small, almost diguised as ground beef, but the texture can't full you. These are just teeny-tiny pieces of meat.

Growing up Mexican, I learned to get the most bang for your buck. Now, this has more meaning than the obvious $4 burrito. The point ihere is the fact that Mexico is a poor country. So poor, there are entire communities made of cardboard boxes on the outskirts of every city. You can see this poverty in the food, but not as a negative. Learning to live poor means making the most of what you have, and food is no exception. Carne asada i'm sure comes from an area as far away from the filet mignon as George Bush is from being a good president, yet with a little spicing and grilling, it can easily contest Chairman Kaga's tastebuds. The funny thing is, i think it's chopped up as teeny-tiny as it is to disguise the fact that the cut of meat has more fat running through it than the halls of a lyposuction clinic. This makes it yummy. Just like Sarah Silverman says, "When life gives you AIDS, make lemonAIDS!"

Today i had super nachos with carne asada. I'm fairly certain it's supposed to serve at least four, but that's 4 small people. I can eat most of this by myself barring any reaction from my tummy. They drop a layer of freshly made corn chips followed by jack cheese and refried beans. Nothign out of the ordinary, and the beans are beans. This one is weird to me. I've seen some reviews where the beans are differentiated... that's like saying one steamed rice is better than another... it's steamed rice! Someone needs to educate me on the differences in quality for both the beans and the sticky sticky.

The asadas is nicely spiced. Obviously with some salt and pepper, but perhaps some cumin as well. This is dalloped on the chips and cheese and beans, and in turned is drowned in sour cream, homeade thick pepper sauce and guacamole that resembles melted mint chocolate chp ice cream. This is the only thign that really needs some work. The guac simply looks like an "accident."

2 lbs of nachos, and a delicious extra bulky movie theater sized freshly squeezed orange juice came out to 11 bucks. Not bad. You can do a burrito and a Jarritos for about 7 bucks - so the pricing is just about average, and well worth it for the food.

So there you have it. Because this is my first review, i'd like to have some room to move in either direction. We now have the bar's height set, and everything else will refer to this precedent.

I rate Taqueria Margaritas 3.5 things of 5 things. "Things" being whatever you like best. 5 stars, happy faces, cans of spotted dick... they all scale the same for this rating system.

Taqueria Margaritas
80 W El Camino Real
Mountain View, CA 94040
(650) 964-1860