Warning about food

I haven't cooked all that much lately, and my bones hurt and I've been in a bad mood. HOWEVER, there was a restaurant review in the Lexington Herald-Leader about a month ago that I wish to mention. Restaurant reviews are more and more rare these days, as are many things one might be interested in seeing in a local newspaper. This one, however, was about a couple of Mexican restaurants frequented mostly by local Hispanics, the kind where you rarely see people like me. One of them is Aguascalientes, which is a restaurant or taqueria next door to my very favorite Mexican grocery store on Alexandria drive where it caters to LOTS of Hispanics. I like it because the prices are reasonable, they have tons of ingredients for Mexican food, and they are nice to me (other than having brown hair and eyes, I do NOT look Mexican). Martin and I decided to go to one of the two in the restaurant review (which was very favorable to both of those reviewed) because it looked like we'd be totally unable to get a seat, given the crowd outside (this was mistake number 1--we were going after church on Sunday, when he had to go to work at Kroger at 3:00 and didn't want to go home first, so he and I went out to lunch).

We went to the other restaurant very favorably discussed in the review, around the corner, sort of, a place called Lulu's, a family owned place. Had a buffet. Menu, too. Tino didn't like the looks of the stuff on the buffet, so he ordered cheese enchiladas from the menu. This took a long time as they make everything from scratch. They were actually very good. The problem was that they came on a big bed of wet lettuce, and were covered with LOTS of potatoes. Once you got to the enchiladas, they were good.

There was, however, no iced tea, only pop and (probably) beer, so I drank water. They did have diet coke for Tino.

I had the buffet. The problem was that the posole was so unappetizing with the huge pieces of clearly very cheap cuts of pork still on the very large bones, very little hominy, I just couldn't bring myself to eat it. And there was tripe (menudo), which I just can't bring myself to eat, either, EVER. So this left turkey mole (it was actually good, but not hot), something that turned out to be pork belly (ALL fat), and a few other things, most of which were seriously unappetizing. The salsas were homemade and very good.

To my astonishment, this all cost $20. The people who own the place are indeed very nice, and by the time we left there were lots of Hispanics there, virtually all of whom were eating either the posole or menudo.

We argued a bit about whether to give it a 1, 2 or 3 on a scale of 10. It deserves better than a 1, and neither of us got sick, so perhaps it oughta have a 3. But go back? I don't think so. An WHY oh WHY did it get such a nice review in the Herald Leader?

I guess I'll probably try Aguascalientes; if the restaurant is as good as the grocery store, it is probably pretty good. And there's another place on Versailles Road about a block away (used to be a Jerry's) that has great fish tacos, seafood chalupas, and things (I think it's called Clamato's).

The MORAL HERE: DO NOT TRUST THE HERALD-LEADER RESTAURANT REVIEW, on those rare occasions these days when it actually happens.

Cheers, Lillie