Don Juan Taqueria: 'Way Authentic

 DJT, in a strip mall at Shelby Street and Hanna Avenue, is not a cookie-cutter Mexican like many other places: they have all the traditional dishes you see everywhere else, but also have a BUNCH of other actual Mexican offerings you won't find everywhere. The decor is more like many real places in Mexico, your basic storefront with polished concrete flooring, lunchroom-style chairs and tables as well as a few booths, and minimal festive decorations, which makes it a surprise when you find out they have a full bar with just about any liquor you want as well as a salsa bar with 6 or 7 different sauce selections. (The salsa bar was closed due to Covid restrictions when we went, but you could request the salsa you want to be brought to your table).  I ordered Birria, a type of mutton stew, but unfortunately they were out of mutton!  Still, they had other non-ordinary selections.  All in all, we loved eating there, and the proprietor and employees provided really courteous and helpful service.  They may not have all the carved wood and upscale atmosphere of some places, but the food is the thing there, and it is a GREAT thing.  iComemos!

Mi Abuelito: More of Everything!

 Mi Abuelito is (sigh) in a strip mall on the east side of the 8300 block of South US31, in yet another of those black holes of the business universe where each new entity soon disappears: It's been 4 or 6 different types of restaurants or bars in the last 10 years or so. Mi Abuelito has been open for about 6 weeks. There is another Mi Abuelito in Franklin, Indiana, but I dunno if the two are connected.   We stumbled upon this place after finding that the newly opened Humble Taco (review to come) had a two-hour wait:  This $$ guy despises waiting in lines, traffic jams, or on hold, and I'm glad we didn't wait....

Mi Abuelito has more of an upscale appearance than most other Mexican restaurants, very beautiful with a LOT of colorful carved furniture and wall decorations.  The artsy menu also had slighly higher prices than I expected, but it was our night out, so WTH.  The Little Woman had a 3-taco plate and I ordered the Fajitas de Lujo (de Luxe).  TLW ordered a Jalapeno Margarita to drink, and when they asked what size she wanted, she said the largest one, not knowing how big that was-- turns out it was a whopping 58 ouncea, so we shared it.  It was delicious but not overly strong, and the jalapenos added a nice zest to the tart sweetness of the margarita mix.

TLW's tacos were very, very good-- traditional with lots of cilantro and nicely browned ground beef. My fajitas were excellent, a GIANT mound of meats, including a large barbecued pork rib, mixed with a decent amount of green peppers and onions. My motto is "leftovers are for quitters", but for one of only a few times in my life I had to admit it was more than I could eat, and in fact there was so much there that it made for lunch the next day for both of us!  In sum, Mi Abuelito is a great Mexican Restaurant, not because it's radically different, but because it does all the usual dishes very well and in a big, BIG way.  iComemos!

Rosita's Mexican Breaks the Cookie Cutter!

The Little Woman reeeeeeeally likes Mexican food, so we probably eat 1 out of 3 meals out at one Mexican place or another.  There's one near our house that we frequent for the sake of convenience, and several others fairly close by.  They're all decent, but in most respects they are ALL THE SAME, at least in the dishes they offer.  So, imagine my surprise when we visit Rosita's Mexican Restaurant, 8908 S. St. Peter Street, in a (yawn) strip mall just across County Line Road from the Greenwood Park Mall, and find an extensive menu with many variations on traditional dishes and a few items I've never heard of. (Yes, I ended a sentence with a preposition, so what?!  It's almost impossible not to do.... DANG! Did I just do it again?  Sigh....)

We've been there twice, now:  on both occasions, TLW had two chicken tacos and loved them-- they use a LOT of cilantro and spices, so they were very, very tasty.  I had the Burrito Roqueta the first time;  it's a burrito covered with a yellow-green cilantro sauce, the likes of which I've never had before-- it was deeeelicious!  On our second visit I had the Fajitas Toluca-- a combination of steak, chicken, and shrimp fajitas combined with ground Chorizo in the sauce, which was FANDAMTASTIC.  My iced tea was real brewed tea, which is quite the find for someone who really likes tea.  The service was excellent, and the waitresses both times were quite easy on the eyes (OW!  Sorry, dear....).  The only thing not stellar about this place was that the rice and beans were good but just like everywhere else.  I can't wait to go back and try the Molcajete that everyone on Tripadvisor is talking about-- it's named after the Mexican version of a mortar and pestle, and I think its served in the mortar, a combination of various meats and vegetables cooked together.  Umm....  Comemos!

El Jalapeno: Good Mexican, and a Little Bit Different

El Jalapeno, 4902 S. East Street, is (yay!) free-standing restaurant in the building that formerly housed Dimitri's and before that Denny's.  It still retains the nice interior woodwork the Dimitri's folks installed, but they have added bench booths with colorful carved woodwork that depicts Mexican village scenery.  They have uncovered all the windows, too, which gives the place a light and airy feel, at least during the day.

The first and best thing we experienced when eating lunch there was the chips and salsa, which wree excellent.  The salsa had just the right amount of heat, and the amount of cilantro and onion in the puree made it quite tasty.  We had some hot salsa also, but though tasty, it was just the standard stuff. I actually found some dishes on the menu that weren't standard Mexican fare, though.  For lunch, I had El Burrito Roqueta, pork tenderloin and melted cheese rolled into a soft tortilla and topped with El Jalapeno (red) sauce and pico de gallo.  It was very good: the meat was browned nicely and the pico de gallo was very fresh.  I think it would have been better as a Chimichanga, but I'm not sure that was on the menu.  Service was fast and polite, and the lunch prices were really reasonable.  !Andale!

Don Gusto PJ: Look closely or you might miss it!

Don Gusto PJ is a tiny Mexican sandwich shop and bakery on the northeast corner of the intersection of Meridian Street and Hanna Avenue. You can't see the name until you get close to the windows, but there is a none-too-big sign on the front of the roof that says "TORTAS" and "PASTELERIA". I'd like to call it a boutique Mexican restaurant, but that might imply the place is fancy and expensive, which it is not, although the chef and the proprietor both wear chef tunics like you see on Iron Chef.  The menu offers about 10 different sandwiches but also has other traditional Mexican entrees like quesadillas, sopes, and burritos. They only have 6 tables, so much of their business is to-go orders, but when I went in to order to-go the first time,  the inside of the place was just so neat and tidy that I had to come back and have a sit-down meal.  The first time, I ordered a steak quesadilla, and it was unlike any I'd had before. Instead of being wrapped in a papery flour tortilla, it was encased in a fried pastry-like corn tortilla shell like a big empanada only it was flaky and tender, and it came with sour cream and lettuce spread across the top.  It was big enough that The Little Woman and I split it for lunch, and it was sooo tasty it almost didn't need the green tomatilla salsa and red pepper sauce that came on the side.  The tomatilla stuff lit me up a little bit, it was so spicy, but it was also so GOOD I wanted to take a gallon or so home.  The steak quesadilla and a bottle of Lipton iced tea came to $4.35, WHAT? WHAT???  The pennies in my pocket almost stopped screaming because I'd let up so much on pinching them!

On Saturday we both went there and ate-in: she had two tacos and a side of refried beans, and I had a steak burrito which wasn't as big as La Bamba's, but it was pretty darned big.  It was reeeeally tasty, I think because there was a bunch of sour cream mixed in with a bunch of cheese along with the beans and tomatoes and rice and lettuce and cilantro.  Her tacos had an even lighter, fluffier version of corn tortilla than our quesadilla had. TLW said she thought maybe they fried it in oil in a shallow pan and then folded it into a taco shell while still hot. It was light and crispy, and the steak bits were well seasoned and accompanied by fresh onion and cilantro.  She had a can of Diet Coke and I had ice water for which the waiter/proprietor provided fresh lime wedges.  Altogether it was $11.71!  I was in shock-- my pennies fell silent and breathed a sigh of relief. !Increible!

You know my theory: if an ethnic restaurant has a lot of customers of that same ethnicity, it's likely to be good, right? (A certain Asian place proving to be the exception as I reported some time ago, but that was probably only because the dishes it served were foreign to my dumb-American palate.)  Well, Don Gusto had a constant parade of Latino patrons while we were there, which ranged from scruffy working men to somewhat well-to-do-looking families, and they all looked satisfied, if that tells you anything.  I thought my quest for the non-cookie cutter Mexican restaurant was at an end with Taco Meats Potato, but alas, that went sour. I must say that Don Gusto is unique, or at least different from any other I've experienced.  !Vamanos a comer!

Taco Meats Potato-- Look Beyond the Name, Please!

UPDATE, 07/29/2014: Taco Meets Potato has closed.  Indy Chin Restaurant has opened in its place.  We see what that's like, and whether this is to become one of those fated "black hole" locations....

UPDATE, 03/10/2014:  I picked up lunch to go:  3 tacos for The Little Woman and fajitas for me, along with a small order of chips & salsa.  The new proprietors appear to be gringos, but they were very nice. Again the food was decent but not the stellar stuff the place turned out in the beginning. The salsa was fresh, but the tacos were uninspiring and though good, the amount of meat in my fajitas was kind of disappointing given the $10 price tag.

UPDATE, 12/16/2013:  There is a sign out front that says "UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT",  so I'll probably be suckered into eatin' there again.  Keeping my fingers crossed that the old guy took it back over....

UPDATE, 06/03/2013: I'm putting this at the top of the post because so many folks come here to read about Taco Meats Potato, and I wish all the good things I said below were still true, but something has happened to this place.  We've been there twice in recent weeks, and both times there was a new crew working and (although the waitresses were very easy on the eyes) they don't seem to be following the same recipes as before.  The salsa is decent but now it's really ordinary, lacking the milkiness and whatever it was that gave it such a distinctive and delicious flavor.  My wife's tacos were missing the fresh cilantro and onion the last ones had, and finally, my fajitas were okay, too, but again, not the culinary delight we once enjoyed there.  Sigh.... maybe the potatoes are still exceptionally good, anyway.

UPDATE, 11/15/2013:  I picked up lunch to-go there-- two tacos, the Enchiladas Trio platter with rice and beans, and a small order of chips and salsa.  The salsa was fresh and good, but still lacked the milkiness and whatever it was that made it so good before.  The tacos were decent but lacked the seasoning they used to have, and they only used one corn tortilla per taco, so they lost all their molecular integrity by the time I go home, resulting in what was essentially a taco salad without the bowl.  My enchiladas were decent, too, and the rice was tastier than most other places.  The beans were good depending on how you like you refritos: TMP's are not the whipped solid-mass like you get other places but contained some whole beans.  In sum, it was all just okay, including the price.  We probably won't be back, sorry to say.  Sigh, again..


Taco Meats Potato, 7040 Madison Avenue, recently opened in the strip mall space that was occupied by Heine's Roast Beef-- If I can reminisce a bit, Heine's State Fair cuisine (since that was their main business, running a mobile trailer at fairs and such) was delicious, but it was every bit as pricey as eating at the State Fair, so I suspect that's why the stationary store didn't last.  Hopefully this isn't gonna be one of those black-hole locations fated to have one failing business after another in it.

Anyway, the Little Woman and I were drawn by TMP's ridiculous pun of a name as much as by her boundless craving for Mexican food.  As you approach the door there is a Southwestern scene painted on the window along with the words "Where you bean all my life?" Geez, another pun?  I had misgivings about what we were about to experience, that is until they brought the multi-colored chips and salsa.  Now, my judgement may have been clouded by a couple of beers I had earlier, but I still believe it was THE BEST SALSA I have ever eaten, including in Mexico.  It had the usual pureed tomato, and I could taste lots of cilantro and onion, but the liquid part of it was a little milky, like maybe there was also sour cream in it as well as other spices that aren't in most other salsas.  The rest of the meal could've been made of sandpaper and I would still be raving about that salsa....

It was late evening, like 9:15, and we didn't want to upset our middle-aged digestive systems with a heavy meal right before bedtime, so we decided to split the Texas Nachos, a plateful of more chips with white cheese, three types of meat, jalapenos, and more of that delightful salsa poured over them, capped off with a big dollop of sour cream and a whole steamed jalapeno. I won't say they were outstanding but they were very good, and the price wasn't bad, either.  There's nothing fancy about the place, but it has the feel of all the authentic taquerias here and in Mexico that  I've ever been in.   I didn't ask, but it appears to be a family operation, with the cook and proprietor a young Hispanic guy who said he's from Dallas, although the source of his recipes is his mother, who hails from the Rio Grande valley, he said. 

As we went up to pay I spied the Potato Menu, which the proprietress/waitress said she didn't show us because they had sold out all their potatoes for the day.  There must have been at least a dozen potato combos listed, from taco to cajun shrimp to a regular loaded potato to a tilapia potato.  Maybe we'll get to sample those another time earlier in the day.  !Que bueno!

UPDATE: 12/03/2012-- We went there COMPLETELY sober this time, and the salsa was still da BOMB.  The waitress also gave us a sample of white-cheese queso with taco meat mixed in that was reeeeally good, too: We liked it so much we bought some to take home.  The Little Woman had two flour tacos with steak, cilantro, and onion, which were deeeelicious. The steak was marinated and seasoned somehow, in a way that made it tastier than any other Mexican restaurant's I've ever had .   I ordered the Taco Potato, a huge baked potato loaded with white cheese, taco meat, lettuce and tomato, capped off with a dollop of sour cream and a whole steamed jalapeno, all served with rice and refried beans. The seasoned coarsely-ground taco meat was also extraordinary.   I can't wait till Tuesday, when ground-beef tacos are $1 each.... The beans were ordinary but good and the Spanish rice was !INCREIBLE!  With most other Mexican restaurants I have to pour salsa or hot sauce over the rice to give it some flavor, but TMP's was tasty all by itself. !ANDALE! !VAS AL TACO MEATS POTATO, AHORITA!

El Puerto - Just A Little Different From the Rest

El Puerto, 7045 Emblem Drive, is (need I say it) in a strip mall in between Mike's Car Wash and Meijer, near the giant sucking vortex of traffic quicksand that is the intersection of Southport Road and Emerson Avenue.  I think it's part of a small chain, as there is another El Puerto at Emerson & Thompson Road.  The decor is simple but clean-- it was a Schlotsky's sandwich shop when first built, and likely retains the original seating.  I've been to the other El Puerto, too, and the decor is similar although this one has more windows and seems more light and airy inside.

On this day I got an order to go, and it was a working lunch so no beer or booze (*sigh*).  The very cordial host took my order promptly and the food was ready !muy pronto!  I had the lunch Chimichanga with beans and my business partner (just kidding, it was The Little Woman) had a burrito with beans, and they were both DEEELICIOUS.  The Chimi was cooked just right, not doughy but not hard, and it was covered with a tasty white queso sauce and filled with spicy shredded beef, while the burrito was covered in a red sauce that was also quite flavorful. The beans had a little bit of white cheese melted on top, which I love, and the to-go order came with a little cup of salsa and a quart-size bag of tortilla chips.  The salsa was excellent for us but maybe a little too spicy for some folks. 

Both dishes seemed a little different from the same ones at other Mexican restaurants (YAHOO!). All the decorations in the place were from Cancun so maybe this is the style of the food there.  I was in Mexico once, visiting Tulancingo in the state of Hidalgo when I saw a restaurant advertising Michoacan-style food, but was unable to go in and ask what that might be because I couldn't leave the tour group....  I've since had the opportunity to ask several Mexicanos living here what regional Mexican food differences there are, but none of them had any idea beyond one guy who said that in Cancun they eat a lot of seafood. D (wait for it) UH!  I can tell you, though, that in Hidalgo they have Pastes (pronounced PA STAYS), a variation of the English Pasties that British miners brought over when they came there to mine silver, yet another variation of which (the pirogi?) was the lunch of German and Polish miners up in Minnesota.  A paste is a pie crust-like pastry baked hard and filled with meat and cheese, to which the Hidalguenses have added plenty of Mexican spice and flavor.  The tour guides brought 'em to us in big boxes like doughnuts, and I woulda consumed a whole box of them if those danged Seguridad Publica guys hadn't tackled me.  Ah, but I digress.... 

El Puerto is nothing fancy, but the food is just a little different and a little tastier than most of the other cookie-cutter Mexican restaurants, for which I am VERY grateful for every cup and every plateful.  Thank you Lord for all this food.  Amen!  Sorry, got carried away there....  !TOME Y COME AQUI AHORITA, MI GENTE! 

Blue Agave - Traditional Mexican

Blue Agave, located (say it with me) in a strip mall at 8049 S. Madison Avenue, has opened in the space that for several years housed Los Picachos bar/restaurant/pool room.  BA is primarily a restaurant now, with the old pool room now a party/banquet area.  We stopped in for a light dinner and drinks, and we were unaware at that time that the previous night a party in the banquet room had been raided by IMPD and the Excise Police, who issued citations to 24 underage drinkers.  Hey, nobody's perfect, right? 

I had high hopes for the place since almost everyone in there appeared to be Latino, my logic being that people of the same ethnicity as the food served would seek out places where that food is the best. I mean, if I was an American in Paris and got homesick and wanted a good burger, I'd go to the best American-style restaurant I could find, wouldn'ja think?  Yeah, me too!  Anyway, we both had margaritas, and split a queso dip and a plate of nachos.  The margaritas were big, cheap, and tasty, but we didn't really taste all that much tequila in them. :-(  I had mixed feelings about the chips, as they had apparently combined a couple batches together-- some of them were crisp with a decent corn taste and others were either stale or had been over-fried so much they were kind of chewy.  Ah, but the salsa!  It was fresh, spicy, and had a lot of flavorful ingredients, cilantro chief among them (if you're going to a Mexican restaurant and don't like cilantro, you better stop off at Micky D's and bring a Quarter Pounder with you).  It was some of the best salsa I've ever had, and I've had quite a lot, beer probably being the only other substance I've ingested more often. 

The queso was billed on the menu as "Grandma's Secret Recipe" and I now must find this Grandma woman and give her a big ol' lip smack on the cheek.  It was the white queso you're used to but with a bunch of little tasty bits added (Little Woman said she thought most of them were minced tomatillas).  Whatever they were, they made the queso DEEEELICIOUS!  The queso and the salsa were proof positive that you can take matchbook covers and coat them with something delicious and make them edible....  The nachos came out, and they were a little different than what us gringos are used to.  The combo nachos ($7.95, I think) included seasoned and grilled chunks of chicken, flank steak, and ground beef piled high on top of a single-thickness bed of those less-than-stellar chips, then covered with lettuce, sour cream, and a smattering of melted white cheese, a meaty mountain quite unlike the gooey foothills of mostly chips & cheese that we're used to getting.  We actually had to eat down the meat & lettuce with forks a ways to get to the chips, which by the time we reached them had been soaked in the juices from the meat, cheese, and lettuce so that they'd lost most of their molecular integrity and had to be eaten with a fork, but they actually tasted better that way!  All three meats were really tasty and well-prepared.  Just as we were about to leave, the proprietor brought out a free slice of cake for me in honor of Father's Day, he said, and it was great, too, topped with about an inch of whipped-cream icing.  Soooo, Blue Agave was a mixed bag, but the good parts were so good that we'll have to go back and try some of their other stuff.  iSalud! 

La Margarita: Slightly Upscale Mexican

La Margarita Restaurant and Tequila Bar just recently opened in the heart of Fountain Square at Virginia Avenue and Woodlawn Avenue (part of the old GC Murphy Building).  It has a trendy, comfortable decor and  quite a selection of tequilas behind the bar, of which I was unable to sample any because it was lunchtime and I was working, dangit! We were immediately presented with tortilla chips and three different salsas:  a pureed spicy tomato sauce similar to other restaurant's salsas, a spicy green tomatillo salsa that I found to really delicious, and a watery kind of pico de gallo that was good but hard to keep on the chips.  The chips themselves were thick, hard, and crunchy, so much so that I got a fragment stuck in my gum, but it did have good flavor, right up until I pried the chip shrapnel out with a drink straw....  I had the lunch special quesadilla & tortilla soup combo and the Little Woman ordered a taco salad.  The quesadilla was a little smaller than I expected and the outside was a toasty brown, also unexpected but quite tasty.  The tortilla soup was a little bland for my taste, compared to say, Don Pablo's (maybe La Margarita's is more true Mexican-- most of the food I had in Mexico had more subtle flavors than the way they're presented in the US).  The taco salad had very fresh greens and was in a pastry bowl that, like my quesadilla, was more browned than we're used to, but it was nevertheless tasty.  At $7.25, lunch was moderately tasty and not a bad deal, but it didn't provide the giant mounds of food you usually get at your run-of-the-mill Mexican restaurants.  If we go back it will likely be just for a tequila tasting....  !Andale!