This week's Tour Stop (ok..... maybe it was two weeks ago... or more.... sue me) brings us back to a familiar building with a new tenant in it. This location at 2227 N Arkansas has had several restaurants there over the last several years starting with the demise of longtime tenant El Paisa (Rest in Peace), which was then followed by Casa Del Charro, which didn't seem to be there very long at all. Maybe a year? Didn't feel like a long time. Anyway, we're back to give the new guys a try! A second location for a restaurant out of Clearwater - Armando's Mexican Restaurant.
My first thought before we got there was that the food must be pretty good. I mean, it's good enough to start a second location right? So apparently business is good in Clearwater. Of course, that's just all conjecture, considering I haven't set foot there. But still, I had high hopes. Armando's seemed to keep a lot of the same stuff from the previous tenants. I definitely didn't feel like I was walking into some place new, more like "same place, new management". Like it's previous tenants, Armando's is a sit down restaurant with a full menu of food and drinks. Speaking of the menu, if you go there looking for street style tacos, apparently you'll have to ASK for them as they're NOT listed in the menu. Why? Silliness.... Anyway, after we finally figured out we could get what we were looking for, I went with an order of 5 tacos: asada steak, al pastor, carnitas, chicken, and chorizo.
We placed our order and snacked on some tasty chips and salsa while we waited. After a short wait our order came out and they looked pretty good, with the standard street dress: onion, cilantro, and lime on the side. I decided to start with the chorizo taco - I really enjoyed this taco. The taco had a nice peppery taste, without the lousy after burn taste that some places have. It was a little greasy, but still, probably one of the better chorizo tacos I've had on tour. The steak and carnitas tacos were next - both were filled with plenty of meat and the shells had a nice crisp to them, like they were thrown on the grill a little bit as well. The steak was definitely the better of the two here, a nice meaty flavor with a decent spice to it. The carnitas was of the fried variety, as opposed to the marinated type. I thought the carnitas was a little dry and lacked any real flavor to it. Maybe I'm just more partial to the marinated ones, but this one definitely improved with some added salsa. The al pastor was next and was also filled with a nice quantity of tasty marinated meat. I enjoyed this one as well, and I would say it was probably the best of the five, followed closely by the chorizo. Last was the chicken. Not sure why I can't get a really flavorful chicken taco (outside of 1 or 2 stops) but the chicken taco here was just middle of the road. Not horrible, by any means, but it looked better than it tasted.
So just to summarize - if I were to go back, I'd load up on the al pastors, chorizo, and steak. Put the chicken and carnitas on the "I'll taste it cause I'm curious" List. Still, I would say overall this was a pretty decent find and I could definitely see myself coming back here. $2.00 a taco isn't the worst price around, but given the location in the heart of some tasty taco places, there are some more economical spots available depending on the day of the week. My overall rankings on the 5-Taco Scale are below.
Food Quality - 3.0 Tacos
Price - $
Value - 3.0 Tacos
Cleanliness - 3.5 Tacos
Service - 3.5 Tacos
Overall Experience - 3.0 Tacos
Likelihood to return - 3.0 Tacos
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