Before I get into this post, I have a confession to make: I was NOT really looking forward to this stop. It had been a while since I've been to CK's, but I'm still more interested in hitting the mom and pop places and hole in the walls than I am in hitting any of the chains on our list. But our intent is to make this a comprehensive tour - no time for me to whine about my taco prejudices. But I'm convinced Travis' choice in restaurants is why Chris stood us up. By the way, we're now looking for a new third person for our tour. Hit us up if you're interested in skipping work and eating tacos once a week. LOL
We decided to go to the Carlos at Kellogg and Ridge and received what I've come to expect from this well known chain: a quick greeting, and an immediate seat with chips and salsa. The chips are always good, but the salsa always seems to be a little different from day to day, which is to be expected. But today's round of salsa was a little too oniony for my preference. Even after eating my tacos and washing down a glass of water, I still felt like I could taste the onion and needed a toothbrush. We got our menus and the first thing I noticed is that everything was pretty different from the last time I was here. I wanted to try a variety of tacos but I didn't notice an a la carte menu. Our waiter, (mostly good server other than the one error I will mention at the end) said we could order any three tacos we wanted and it would be about nine bucks. So I decided to go with a combo of a mahi fish taco, a chicken taco, and the brisket taco.
When my plate arrived, I was actually pretty happy with the presentation: it was not the bland, everyday chain plate that I had expected. I started with the fish taco - I always worry that I'm going to get rubbery, dried out fish. But in this case, I got a delicious taco with lots of perfectly cooked fish. The taco had a light hint of lime and chili spice that was quite tasty. The chicken taco was served on soft shells with what tasted like a cheesy/sour cream sauce. Again, a nice surprise for a chain taco, the plentiful chicken was dressed lightly in lettuce, white cheese, and cilantro. The brisket taco looked like it was about to fly off my plate! This thing came in a hard fried flour tortilla with two swaths of cheese attached. After compacting this thing down to a manageable size, I was treated to quite the yummy taco - meaty, cheesy, with just the right amount of green chili kick. Pretty much the opposite of what I was expecting this go round.
If it's been a while since you've been to CK's, you might want to come by and check it out. The service was good, but don't trust the pricing as our $9.00 taco plate ended up being $16.00. Still, I left feeling pretty satisfied with the tacos, though I WAS hoping to give Travis some crap for making us go to a chain. Guess I'll save that for when he tries to make us go to Taco Bell (puke). Here are my ratings overall on the 5 Taco Scale:
Food Quality - 4.0 Tacos
Price - $$
Value - 3.0 Tacos
Cleanliness - 4.5 Tacos
Service - 4.5 Tacos
Overall Experience - 4.0 Tacos
Likelihood To Return - 5.0 Tacos
Why wouldn't you hold the waiter to his pricing?
ReplyDeleteSeems kinda shady.