El Ranchero: meh
Wifey's 2 cents:
Tonight was "date night". Hubby and I did dinner and a movie. We decided to try one of the local Iowa City restaurants that I have been hearing about for several years. I've had numerous people tell me good things about El Ranchero, located on the south side of Iowa City, IA. So, tonight we decided to give it a try. We both enjoy good Mexican food, so a chance to eat "authentic" Mexican food is something we are generally up for.
The outside of the restaurant wasn't awful, there were certainly a few spots on the outside where you could tell repairs to the plaster needed to be repaired -- there was a giant hole and you could see the chicken wire beneath. We got inside and were seated immediately, which isn't too surprising since it was about 6:30pm on a Tuesday, not exactly the busy night of the week at any restaurant.
We were greeted by our server and drink orders were placed. Chips and salsa appeared not too long after, and then the drinks. The chips were standard unsalted tortilla chips, nothing amazing. The salsa... not much can really be said about their salsa either. It wasn't made in house. It isn't fresh. The tomatoes are over pureed. It was almost as if there was no onions, garlic, or cilantro in the salsa - 3 out of the 4 main ingredients of salsa. I've purchased better salsa from the grocery store. I was holding out hope though that the cheese dip (queso) would be good. I'd heard recently from a co-worker that she and her family really liked their queso, so I was interested. Hubby and I love cheese. Warm, melted cheese... good queso in our house lasts a very short time because we enjoy it so much.
So, we ordered our dinners and an appetizer of cheese dip (that's how it is labeled on the menu). By the time our server brought us our cheese dip we were almost out of chips, and it took him a good long while before he got us a refill, that however didn't matter as by that point I wasn't interested in eating their cheese dip. I must say, that first bite of the melted cheese was incredibly disappointing. It was simply melted Monterey Jack cheese. That's it. I quickly became very glad that they didn't call it queso, because it truly was melted cheese, but it didn't even earn the name "dip". Dip is something that you scoop up with a chip or a cracker or a veggie stick or a piece a fruit. It isn't thin. It isn't watery. This "cheese dip" was both of those. So not only was it bland, it was so thin it didn't stick to the chip, and it was as if someone put milk or water in it to purposefully thin it out. I tried improving it by adding some of the salsa, it helped, but it didn't save it. So I gave up with the appetizers at that point.
Our dinners arrived hot and both hubby and I were holding out hope that the main dishes would be much better than our appetizers had been. It was like watching a bad movie that everyone has raved over, and you are sitting there thinking, "this HAS to get better. everyone likes it. so it MUST get better, right??" WRONG!!! Looking back, perhaps we should have called it quits at the "cheese dip" and eaten somewhere else. We didn't. We stuck it out.
We each ordered combo platters, so that we both got to try 3 different main dishes. So, in total we tried 6 different main dishes tonight.
Hubby had a cheese quesadilla, a bean tostada, bean enchilada (or it may have been a burrito).
Cheese quesadilla -- was a flour tortilla with plain monterey jack cheese inside
Bean tostada -- flat corn tortilla, layered with refried beans, shredded lettuce, a SLICE of tomato and some guacamole
Bean enchilada/burrito -- flour tortilla with refried beans and a sprinkle of cheese wrapped up with tomato sauce on top
I had a beef tostada, a beef taco, and a flauta.
Taco -- regular hard shell taco with a good amount of ground beef topped with a bit of shredded lettuce and a sprinkle of cheese
Beef tostada -- flat corn tortilla layered with ground beef, shredded lettuce, a sprinkle of cheese, a dollup of sour cream and a SLICE of tomato
Flauta -- flour tortilla with shredded beef wrapped up and fried topped with "cheese dip"
First criticism that BOTH of us had with ALL of the food -- it all needed seasonings
Every single item was bland! I have never had bland Mexican food, but this place managed to do it. The refried beans were over pureed, much like the salsa. Also, the beans were over-cooked. Not burnt, not scorched, just over-cooked. I am not huge fan of refried beans, but my hubby who is vegetarian likes them and kind of needs them as a source of protein and fiber. They were unappealing and unappetizing. The enchilada sauce was more of a tomato sauce. It was very one dimensional. Something that I've never experienced with an enchilada sauce before. This is all we could really say about the entrees that Hubby had. Which I think is very sad because normally we can carry on about dishes for hours.
As for my 3 entrees, all of them were lacking seasoning. They pretty much didn't taste like anything in particular. The best part of the meal for me was the fried tortilla of the flauta - which is sad because it was almost burnt and I think that is the only reason it tasted like something at all. I pulled the shredded beef out to see if I could taste it on its own, I could, but it wasn't pleasant. It didn't taste like much at all, and I can't even tell for sure if it really was beef because it didn't have that normal "beefy" flavor.
After eating this bland fare we headed over to the movie theater, where hubby decided to get some popcorn that was over dressed with "butter".
The best food item of the night? My bottle of water that I got from my fridge when we got home. Sad night indeed for food. Oh well, guess we'll try again tomorrow.
Hubby's 2 cents:
Confession time... I don't really care all that much about "authentic" food, I care more about how it tastes, and what kind of value I'm getting for the money. When I am in a place that uses the "authentic" tag, I really shouldn't be thinking that about chain restaurants where the food could be better... many would say that thinking about Carlos O'Kelly's is bad enough... but thinking that Taco Bell would be better...
I always like it when a restaurant makes it easy for me to tell what my vegetarian options are, and this menu gave me 5-6 options in a box right on the first page which was nice. Also nice was that the kitchen NOT putting in the remains of dead animals was reflected in slightly lower prices then the rest of the menu. They also offer make your own combos which I'm in favor of. Overall I figured that this was likely to be a win on grounds of value. Sadly it didn't work out that way once taste was put into the equation.
The combo that I picked gave me a quesadilla, a bean tostada, and what I'm pretty sure was a bean enchilada. (I can't remember for 100% sure what I ordered)
Beans wrapped in a tortilla can be awesome.. but it really helps if you toss in some onions or peppers or something in with them. If you aren't going to do that, some cheese or awesome spices could also work. Sadly for flavor I instead got a bit of cheese on top, and the whole thing covered with tomato sauce that was either made in house from a recipe I don't like, or a canned product that I can't imagine sells well.
The tostada had beans, some lettuce, cheese, and a couple (which is to say two, a couple is always two, never more, but I digress) slices of tomato. The corn tortilla was tasty I thought, beans without flavor, tomato was a bit woody as I don't think it was ripe enough, lettuce and cheese didn't have much flavor.
It's hard to muck-up a cheese quesadilla... they didn't. (though some green onions or something would have gone nicely in with the cheese.) However I think it's sad when the best parts of a meal (aside from the company) is cheese melted in a folded over flour tortilla, and the (likely fountain) lemon-aid.
My wife has already covered the "cheese dip" and it's issues. I don't agree with her on the salsa as I think it could have been made from a house recipe. Sadly that didn't make it a good recipe if so.
Was it the worst meal that I've had? No. Did I finish all of it? Yes. (but I was raised in the mid-west, and we don't waste food if we can help it) Will I be suggesting that we go there again? Not without my wife knowing that I'm joking and her rolling her eyes at my sense of humor. Would I recommend it to others? Not to anyone I liked, and I tend not to recommend food to people I don't like
Great review. For more Mexican fare try El Banditos on Market Street. I had breakfast for the first time there and enjoyed it very much. The cheese was good.
ReplyDelete