Well, as we've gone along on The Tour, one truth is starting to become painfully obvious to my Taco Tourmates - don't let Shon choose the place. I mean what are the odds that every place I suggest is mediocre? At best? Let's run down the list shall we? El Gordo? Bland!! Los Coco's? Crap!! Mr. Taco? Heck that place was apparently so disgusting, Chris arrived first and wouldn't even let the rest of us go in. I even went "off tour" and reviewed Last Palmas in Andover when I went with the family. Was it a "wow" experience? Nope. But have we learned anything from all of this?!?! Nooooooo.....which is why when Thing 1 and Thing 2 couldn't decide on a place to go I ended up opening my mouth. And landed us at Ricardo's Mexican Food on N. West St.
Ricardo's sits in a building that was once an old fast food restaurant just south of Central and West streets. Even though it has a "mom and pop" feel to it, it definitely operated like more of a fast food type restaurant - order at the counter, pick up your food when called. After looking over the menu, I ordered an adobada taco, a carne asada, and a lengua taco. I also ordered a ground beef taco that came on a large soft tortilla. After placing the order, I went by the little bar set up with a couple of different salsa choices, lime, pico, etc. I took a sampling of the medium salsa and the green tomatillo. My order came up fairly quickly, which was good cause I was ready for some tacos!!
Once I had my order, my first thought was that I was both pleased and disappointed. Pleased, because the tacos appeared to look fairly tasty. Disappointed, because they looked like snack-sized appetizer tacos. Now, I'm not sure why my tacos apparently tasted so much different than Chris and Travis', but I didn't think they were that bad. My three street tacos had a decent flavor to them - not the best round of tacos I'd ever had, but far from the worst. My meat was well prepared and tender and I especially like all three with a little spritz of the tomatillo salsa. Personally, I think they just served the white guys the crap tacos and gave me the good stuff. But again, I ate the 3 street tacos and I just knew I was going to be upset and still hungry. Good thing (maybe?) that I had the ground beef taco - unfortunately, it wasn't nearly as good as the other three. It was soggy ground beef that was wrapped in a large, soft tortilla that was almost bread like in it's texture. This was dressed in more of a tex mex style - lettuce, tomato, cheese. It really just did the job of being a filler, but wasn't good for much else.
I think this place might've gotten higher marks (at least from me) if they'd have made tacos that were more than two bites. But in the end, for the price, I would rather go to Los Pino's as the closest quality taco option in that area. My overall rankings on the 5-Taco Scale are below.
Food Quality - 3.0 Tacos
Price - $-$$
Value - 1.5 Tacos
Cleanliness - 3.5 Tacos
Service - 4.0 Tacos
Overall Experience - 2.5 Tacos
Likelihood to Return - 1.0 Tacos
When did 10 minutes become "fairly quickly"?
ReplyDeleteThere was no one else in the place but us, and only one person in the Drive-Thru.