Time to play a little catch up - my apologies for the delay getting this one out, but life, work, and everything else seems to be happening. But at least I actually made it to this restaurant. It's been two weeks since Travis and I went to Bento Café, and Chris still hasn't made it over there for tacos. Turd.
Anyway, Tour Stop #52 brought us to a place that I would say has one of the more eclectic menus around - I've been to Bento Café once before, but NOT for tacos. I actually stopped in a few months back and had some sushi and I remember it being pretty decent. That's right - sushi and Mexican. Strange combo, but it seems to work for them.
Bento Café is in the former Poblano Mexican Grill space just south of Central and Ridge. I used to come to Poblano's quite a bit and Bento has kept a lot of the same stuff. No really - furniture, fixtures, even the menu (at least the Mexican grill menu) is still the same. The M.O. for the Mexican food is also the same - walk up to the counter, place an order, pick your toppings as you go down the line, pay and eat. Basically a poor man's Chipotle with a sushi option. Anyway, there were three taco options on the menu and so I went for one of each: chicken, steak, and a shredded beef. I had them make mine with lettuce and pico de gallo, with the salsas on the side.
I decided to start with the chicken taco - a fair amount of meat, but the flavor was nothing special. Not bad, but nothing amazing. Travis noted that the chicken was too perfectly diced and thought it might have come out of a bag. The steak was next and again, I think they treat the customers pretty well with a decent amount of meat. The steak was a better taco and had more flavor to it than the chicken for sure. Still both tacos really needed the toppings and the salsa on them to bring some extra flavor and unfortunately that's actually a minus when it comes to judging the meat. Awesome street tacos just need meat, cilantro and maybe a squirt of lime. These definitely had to be "Tex-Mexed" with more toppings to add some flavor. Last was the shredded beef taco. I would say this one was probably the best of the three. The beef had stewed for a while and was quite juicy, almost messy. But still, a decently tasty taco that really didn't need any extra salsas to spice it up.
Overall, I would say the tacos here are about what I would expect for a Chipotle style local restaurant. The service was ok, but I took note that almost every drink option at the fountain had a "Sorry, we're out" sign on it. Which would've been very frustrating if I were looking for anything else besides water. If you're in a hurry and understand what you're getting into here, this place probably isn't a bad option. But if I come back, I will probably be going for the shredded beef.... or maybe I'll just stick to the sushi again. My overall rankings on the 5-Taco Scale are below.
Food Quality - 2.5 Tacos
Price - $
Value - 3.0 Tacos
Cleanliness - 2.5 Tacos
Service - 2.5 Tacos
Overall Experience - 2.5 Tacos
Likelihood to Return - For tacos? 2.0 Tacos. For sushi? 3.5.... sushi rolls.
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