The quest for some great Mexican Food in the South continues!
Being a transplant from the Southwest now living in Louisiana I embarked on an epic quest to find a great plate of south of the border food in a vast region populated with more crawfish and jambalaya restaurants than you can shake an alligator tail at.
So far my nearly six year quest has produced some interesting results ranging from the rather tasty meals to things I can only describe as culinary blasphemy.
Yes, it can be the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to Mexican Food around these parts.
As I said, however, there is some really good food out there if you know where to find it, and thankfully for you, I have made it my mission to write about the places that make my finicky pallet happy. This, of course, brings me to the subject of this article, Rio Rojo Mexican Restaurant which gets high marks for its food from both myself and my equally hard to please wife Terri.
I had actually been holding back this review from as far back as the days just before Christmas because I had already published my list of the Best Restaurants in Louisiana for 2023 and I wanted to be able to add Rio Rojo to my list for 2024.
As I stated, the wife and I were looking forward to some good Mexican Food to celebrate the holidays and we were debating just where to procure such a meal. I first choice would have been Pedro's as it is one of the better eateries here in Alexandria. We were given some pause on making a stop there due to the fact that we experienced a less than satisfactory meal there back in October. This fact left us less than optimistic about a return visit.
It was at that moment that I remembered that Rio Rojo was just around the corner from our apartment and I was eager to give it a try. Thankfully, we stepped out in faith and gave the restaurant a try because it was a truly great meal.
Now, if you have ever read any of my reviews of Mexican Restaurants, you know that I always make a big deal out of chips and salsa. I always point out that good salsa is always a sign of whether you are going to get a good main course or not. I have held on to that etched in stone fact like my faith in the Lord, it was never to be questioned. On this occasion, however, I learned the important lesson that all culinary rules can be broken. You see, in this one instance, the salsa was rather bland, yet the main course was rather delicious.
For the record, I ordered the Chili Covered Enchiladas and Terri got the Tostada Meal. Both of these were really amazing. Everything was cooked to near perfection and on a contrast and compare basis I think that the food itself was even better than Pedro's, which I had been raving about a lot lately.
Generally when it comes to a meal at any Mexican Restaurant, enchiladas are always a pretty safe meal to try. After all, it is kinda hard to mess up either enchiladas or tacos, but trust me, some places have figured out how to even mess those up. I urge you not to eat at a Taco Bell in the South, or you will discover what I'm talking about.
I'm actually looking forward to trying even more food at Rio Rojo like their Puffed Tacos or Chile Rojo.
I have to talk about another important, but often overlooked, part of any great Mexican dish, guacamole. I have to say that the guacamole at Rio Rojo is on par with anything I ate in either California or New Mexico and that is a big deal as far as I'm concerned.
In my book Rio Rojo is a must try for anyone who is also looking for some good south of the border food here in Central Louisiana.
I don't write a lot of restaurant reviews here on this blog so you know that if I take the time to veer off course from my usual babbling it must be something worthy of such an honor. Indeed Pedro's Tacos & Tequila here in Alexandria is such a place.
Over the past three days there has been one common theme running through my life - the Mexican/American fast food chain Del Taco. It all started three days ago when my wife mentioned how much she missed the chain's famous Taco Tuesdays where you can get three tacos for $1.49 (It used to be three tacos for .99 cents). Then yesterday I heard an add for the restaurant while listening to a radio station from Albuquerque, New Mexico (KDRF 103.3 eD FM). Apparently Del Taco has twenty items under $2 these days. If that wasn't enough today a coworker told me that her sister in Barstow worked for - wait for it - Del Taco.
Now there are two types of these deep fried culinary delights. One is the bean and cheese and the other is the beef and cheese. Honestly you can't go wrong with either of them. Each one is a trip straight to Mexican Food Heaven. The joy doesn't end there however, there is a bonus in the form of cups of homemade hot sauce. Add a little bit of the stuff to each bite and the whole experience goes to another level.
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