esperanza
Apr 1, 2003, 7:38 PM
Post #1 of 13
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After eating in many of the restaurants in the Chapala/Ajijic area over quite a few years, I find that there are few if any that I would grade consistently high overall. In one or another, the food is sometimes excellent but the service is....to be charitable...uneven. In one or another, the service is usually good but the food is mediocre. In some the food is worth going for despite the…shall we say, spotty… level of cleanliness. However, overall, I've found that it's more often than not a disappointment to dine out, if the experience is supposed to be about dining as well as the company one is in.
David, thanks for the link...I read and re-read Blue's article. But it's not a list of current restaurants, or a review of current restaurants...it's a piece about a BOOK about a list of current restaurants. The information in the article might make you want to buy the new addition of Ms Kendricks' book, but it doesn't give much solid information about the state of the restaurants of Ajijic.
It's hard in a small town newspaper to write an honest restaurant review. Most of the reviews written in the local English-language press are little more than puff pieces written by folks who appear not to know food. What review worth its column inches would talk about a dish by saying, "I don't know what this thing was, but it tasted okay to me." It's the job of the reviewer to have an inkling of what the food is, what a dish is striving for, what it's supposed to taste like, before hitting 'Open New Document' on Word…no?
Clearly the deliciousness of food is objective. What makes me salivate and come running may not be what makes YOU belly up to the table. My experience of the majority of the foreign community’s desire for food is Tex-Mex and ‘Continental’. Many foreigners would rather pay premium prices for mediocre food than risk (and I use that word advisedly) chancing a supper in a mostly-Mexican cenaduría. Honest Mexican food goes begging, for the most part, although there is one small restaurant here in town that does a booming foreign-community business one night a week~even though the attitude among the foreigners who go there seems to be, “Oh my god, no one back home would ever believe that we are eating in a place like THIS. George, be sure to wipe off that fork before you use it!”
We forget that we live in a small town, albeit a small town with substantial outside influence. Most of the restaurateurs appear to be ill-prepared and generally unacquainted with the management of a top-flight restaurant. Most of the waitstaff appears not to be aware of the requirements for good service. Most of the patrons appear to be equally ill-prepared to genuinely critique a meal.
What in fact DOES make a fantastic restaurant? Wouldn’t it be a combination of consistently well-prepared high quality and honest ingredients, attentive but not overpowering service, pleasant ambience…what else? Close, careful management by a knowledgeable owner. Attention to detail. Cleanliness.
Where in town can we find this combination? Again, your choices may not be my choices, your critieria may not be my criteria. But gosh, we settle way too often for mediocre or less.
My favorite place to eat, when I do eat out, is…uh uh, I’ll never tell.
http://www.mexicocooks.typepad.com
(This post was edited by esperanza on Apr 1, 2003, 7:48 PM)
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