Monday, August 7, 2017

El Molcajete, East Colonial (50)

I tried this new (six weeks) Mexican restaurant near 50 on North Goldenrod on Friday at lunch. I believe this area was full of Vietnamese places not so long ago. Now it is mostly Spanish speaking from University to 50. Ignore any info on their hours that you see online. They correspond to the food truck they run/ran out of Kissimmee. They are open seven days a week from 10 am (I think) until late at night. Their number is 407-845-1628 if I have that wrong and you want to check.

They have an "expanded" Mexican menu that includes things like Vera Cruz Snapper and Huevos Rancheros, however, the real reason to visit is antojitos. Antojitos are corn themed apps/street food that translates into "little cravings". They have ten "classes" of them and I tried four of them for you people. I tried the tacos, pambazo, picadita and gringas. Two I ate there and two I brought home for dinner. I had a cabeza (cow brain) and lengua (cow tongue) taco because you know I'm disgusting. Both were good. The brain is soft and oily and the tongue was lean and tender. They are served in freshly made tortillas in a street food (onion and cilantro) style. They cost $2 a piece. Next I had the $4.50 picadita. It was basically a corn (huarache) cake with green or red (I did green because I always do red) sauce, sour cream, cotija cheese and the menu says cheese (but I don't recall eating any). It was ok. How good can a corn cake get? I'm an omnivore. At home I ate the pamboza. This is a stupid dish that I always avoid because it sounds (and now I know tastes) so lame. It's a roll dipped in red sauce with sour cream, lettuce, and cotija cheese. This one was filled with potatoes and chorizo (I tasted and saw no evidence of chorizo). It was $5.50 down the toilet (but we'll get to that later). The last dinner item was the gringas. It was basically an al pastor (chicken and pineapple) quesadilla. It cost $6. I don't really like al pastor, so, this didn't do anything for me either. That said, I liked the food in general. It's authentic from the Toluca (capitol of the state of Mexico near the big volcano outside of Mexico City) region. I really only have three peeves that may keep it from my "favorites" list. 1. They charge $3 for a soda. 2. They start the tipping options at 18% and you can only tip by percent not real numbers. 3. Something in the mix did give me intestinal issues the next day. The last "peeve" is the most serious. I'll stipulate that it was hot in the car coming home and I didn't ever refrigerate the dinner items.

The plus is in a scary-ish strip mall across from a gas station. some of their windows were cracked and it looked a little trashy outside (inside was better). They have three tables of four in the front and six or seven booths on the left. Two murals are the main decoration. There was nobody else eating there at 1pm. I wonder if the prices are a little high for the neighborhood? A place next door called Willie's Pinchos seemed to be faring alot better. The rest of the antojitos menu was gorditas/sopes, huaraches, tortas, burritos, quesadillas and esquites/elotes. The last two are corn kernels in a cup and corn on the cob. They cost $4. The huaraches were the most expensive at $9. The other tacos come as: al pastor, carnitas, tripa, pollo, buche (stomach), and chorizo. The free chips (colored) were very good and came with a garlic-y chipotle salsa that came in a cute container that I'm not sure is the molca or the jete. In know that isn't what it translates to, I just didn't want to write that it came in a mortar. And from that you can guess that the name means mortar and pestle.

Overall it probably will satisfy a Tex-Mex AND a Mexican (authentic) crowd. You have the Taco Bell/Don Pablo (?) items for the 'fraidy cats and the specialties for the OGs. And if that fails, you'll have to tell me how Willie's was. But, I doubt a fraidy cat would have any better reaction to a pincho. They had parking and took credit cards. I don't love the fact that ingredients seem to have been overlooked/forgotten and that it didn't totally agree with my buche and tripe, but, it was still interesting and they did give me a gigantic soda to go (when I just asked to have the remainder of what they poured me already).

No comments: