restaurant review

Zocalo


ernesto's has always been somewhat of a favorite of mine in town. i love their salsa, margaritas and the enchiladas suizas are amazing. it's one of the places i almost always choose for birthday's or for just hanging out with friends to eat hella mexican food and get wasted on margaritas in a semi-casual environment.

with that said, i was more than excited to hear that the same owner (ernesto, the man himself) was opening a slightly more exotic mexican restaurant merely blocks away called Zocalo.

when it first opened up i tried getting some friends together to check it out, but after three failed attempts to round up a posse, i gave up on everyone's loser ass and decided to just go there for lunch this past weekend with niki.

first of all, let me start out by saying that i'm kind of disappointed in all the "hoity-toity" "shi-shi" restaurants popping up around town and lack of affordable GOOD EATS in mid-town (i miss greta's), so i was somewhat put off by Zocalo when i drove by looking for a parking spot and saw that they had a designated passenger drop-off zone for their valet service. valet? why are all the restaurants in mid-town following this trend? it's mid-town for chrissakes! park a block away and walk, you pussies! anyway. since it was lunch time and a weekend, the valet parking wasn't being used, but we still couldn't park out front since the "passenger loading only" curb right out front was painted white, so we had to park all the way across the street. boy are my legs tired from the 20 foot hike. i hope the valet parking customers get their moneys worth.

after entering, we were promptly seated and were greeted with a pleasant enough server who was laying it on thick in a way that made me crack up every time he came by. for being as fancy looking of a place this is, and considering i was dressed like a complete slob (holy t-shirt, flip-flops, unshaven face, unkempt hair..you know..my usual attire)i'll have give the service extra bonus points since places this nice usually judge by dress attire, so i assume (i've been ignored at places on more than one occasion).

the decor was a pretty nice and tasteful mexican spanish/euro blend with earthy colors and white. the architecture looked like it had been there for years, even though they pretty much built the place from the ground up.

chips y salsa: perfect size basket of chips and THREE different salsas (green, red, pico de gallo) and they made sure we never ran out.

margarita: bomb! i got one of the worst cold headaches ever because i couldn't stop slurping down my bad boy top-shelf margarita.

there were two vegetarian items on the menu. i ordered one: the vegetable pie covered in mole sauce and sour cream, niki ordered the other: veggie burrito served with mashed yams(?!?!?). when our orders came, our server also brought out two large bowls. one contained cilantro flavored rice, the other had black beans...corn tortillas were served on the side as well. my dish consisted of a huge mole covered dumpling (like a large knish) filled with cheese (?) corn, beans, rice and other veggies along with green sauce (made from cilantro) and a red sauce (made from beets) on the side as a plate garnish. i gots to say, it was fantastic. niki's burrito had a similar filling, but was grilled on each side, cut in half and served on top of the mashed-yams. hers was really good too, but she said next time she'll order what i had. another comment niki made was "this is great stuff, but i wouldn't come here if i was in the mood for mexican food". it's mexican food, but more yucatan peninsula style mexican food.

the bill was somewhat hefty, so i'll only be able to go there once in a great while when i feel like splurging, unless they have a happy hour i could take advantage of (happy hours are the new downtown trend...all credit to camille for being a pioneer).

bottom line...Zocalo==good stuff.