Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Trashy Mexican Food in Waltham

If life in SoCal taught me anything, it's that nothing cures a bad mood quite as well as smothering it in trashy Mexican food. Thus, in an attempt to increase the rate at which I cheered up after recent badness, I finally checked out the trashy Mexican restaurant about a mile from my apartment: Taqueria Mexico. Because I wasn't up to driving (what with back pain and the accompanying pain meds... and because I often don't feel like leaving my apartment...) I decided to have it delivered, which meant a $25 minimum order... A good opportunity to try several things, but also enough food for several meals... I started out with a carnitas burrito, since this is the item that won me over at Santeria Domingo Taqueria Oaxaca in Portland:
(Really informative picture, huh?) This one features beans, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and sour cream along with your choice of meat. I thought the carnitas were really good, but I'm not used to lettuce in my burritos. I liked it in terms of flavor, and may order it again (since it's a full meal for $5), but it's definitely different than the burritos I consider to be my favorites... Another item that I ordered based on a good experience at a Portland joint (this one from Ole Frijole) was the carne asadad torta:
This is pretty much the exact same filling as a burrito (beans, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and sour cream plus your meat) except put on bread rather than in a tortilla. I wasn't particularly impressed with the carne asada, and found this overall to be sort of bland and disappointing. Ah, well. Because I'm so in love with the shrimp quesadilla at sweet, sweet Super Cucas in Santa Barbara, which features griled zucchini among other delicious ingreidents, I decided to try the "quesadilla especial," filled with corn, zucchini, red peppers, and chipotle sauce:
This was actully pretty good, even if it couldn't hold a candle to the mind-blowing Super Cucas offering. (It's probably not really fair to compare food from a place in tiny-suburb Waltham to that from my favorite place in Southern California, though.) I thought this was good, though, and would probably check it out again. Finally (Dude, I know. It takes a lot of ordering to get up to $25...), I ordered the "Fiesta Plate" just to get a chance to finish off with a random assorment of things:
On the bottom right and left you have your chorizo quesadilla, while at the top (thoroughly smothered) you have your chicken enchilada (the smothered thing at the very top) and barbecue flauta (below it). Everything on this plate was pretty tasty. I liked the chicken enchilada a lot (even though I never tend to order enchiladas) and the flauta was slightly burnt but quite tasty in spite of that. I liked how the quesadillas (which had no cheese inside, just chorizo) highlighted the tortillas and chorizo... In summary: WAY better than the other trashy Mexican restaurant in Waltham that I tried, if not anything to be super-excited about. It will definitely work in a pinch when I desperately need trashy Mexican food and can't be bothered to travel particularly far to find it. Plus, there were some strong points in this order, so hopefully as I continue to explore the menu over time I'll figure out the perfect way to spend $25 there...

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