Sunday, October 3, 2010

Taqueria Guanajuato

From May 23, 2010

This is a new restaurant on Wedington Avenue (by Rupple). If you've heard me talk about the Philippino restaurant and grocery in the strip mall, well, it's gone. There's now a Mexican restaurant, grocery, and hairdressers there instead.

Since the name is Taqueria Guanajuato, I'm assuming they're from the Mexican state of Guanajuato (see mandatory Wikipedia article).

TG is a bare bones type of place. It's L-shaped, with tables in the short part and booths in the long part. The walls are brightly painted, but they didn't have a whole lot of decorations up. The booths are basic and seemed a little small. There were two girls working as servers when we arrived. One was definitely a teenager, the other more college-aged, and she had English as a second language.

We sat down, and they brought out salsa and chips. The salsa was nice and fresh tasting, and there was hot and mild, although hot wasn't that hot. The chips were really really good! They're thin and crispy, no salt. Yummy! I had ice tea, of course, but ordered unsweet. It was alright. Not the best, but definitely drinkable.

Once our food arrived, we realized that this was an actual Mexican restaurant, not a Tex-Mex or Cal-Mex restaurant. Yay! I had a combo plate: 1 steak taco, 1 pork tamale, rice, and beans. Without cheese of course. My mom had the same, but with cheese. I was impressed by the steak taco. It was small pieces of beef, on 2 small corn tortillas (4"), lightly oiled and heated. There were onions and cilantro on top, and I squeezed lime juice on it. It was delicious! My mom had cheese on hers, and Frank said it looked like actual queso fresco, not Monterrey Jack. The beans and rice were a little plain, and a little small, but I mixed them together and they were good too. No salad on the plate. The pork tamale was a regular shredded pork tamale, with red sauce, in a corn husk rapper. It didn't look like a lot of food, but it was filling and it was only $5!

Frank had the Cubana torta, which appeared to be one of those pressed Cuban sandwiches, but wasn't. The bread was just thin (and raised) but it wasn't pressed. It had pork, cheese, and ham on it, as well as lettuce, tomato, onion, and avocado. There was also some kind of sauce. The sandwich was oval, about 4" x 8". Frank said it was "all kinds of good." I think this is his new favorite nearby place to eat.

The menu is pretty interesting. Most items on the menu are a la carte. They have different categories: tacos, burritos, sopes, tortas, quesadillas, gorditas, and huaraches. Under each category they have the same basic meats: grilled steak, beef head, beef tongue, spicy sausage, marinated pork, ham/bacon/beef/cheese/pineapple, pork intestines, pork stomach, chicken, and pork. They have specials every weekday, and menudo on the weekends. They're open from 8 am to 10 pm, 7 days a week. They also have some specials, some breakfast food, a kids menu and ceviche.

Overall, we really liked it. If you want some kind of fancy place with margaritas, this isn't the place for you. But if you want good food, for pretty cheap nowadays, give Taqueria Guanajuato a try.

Taqueria Guanajuato on Urbanspoon

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