– Today I was walking down Union, and I noticed a new sign in the window of Rio Loco, the Mexican restaurant that is taking over Buckley’s old building: “Grand Opening Fiesta Monday, January 23.” That’s this Monday! Hmmm… anyone want to go? I’d be up for it… e-mail paul at paulryburn dot com if you’d be interested.
– Well, that got me hungry for Mexican food, so I walked down to Adams to try the other new Mexican place, Sgt. Jalapeno’s Tortilla Company. So here’s my review…
They brought me a basket of homemade tortilla chips and homemade salsa. The tortilla chips were not the typical Tostitos-type chips you find in most restaurants – looks like they were made with flour rather than corn, fried golden brown, lightly salted. Very tasty. Salsa was very good too. I ordered a bowl of cheese dip, which was about halfway between yellow and white and I’d rate it as average.
They have a TV over the register, and they had basketball on. Good addition – I don’t remember that being there when I passed by a couple of weeks ago. Duke lost today. YEAH!!!!
For my entree I ordered the Houston Solution – two cheese enchiladas topped with red sauce and meat ($7.95). It came with rice on the side, a jalapeno pepper (a whole one, not sliced) and on the side was a bowl of pintos with bacon. All the food was homemade and very good.
To use the restroom, I had to get a key and walk down the hall to the Comfort Inn. I know they can’t do anything about that but it reminded me a bit of a gas station.
What else… they had La Prensa Latina by the door, for those of you who like to read Spanish-language news while you eat. Overall, food was quite good – far, far better than Pancho’s, and cheaper. I recommend paying them a visit.
I hear they do a booming lunch business from the nearby federal buildings. When I was in there I was their only table, but it was 3:00 on Saturday, so what would you expect? They had a party of 25 coming in later in the day so it sounds like they’re doing all right. Hope they stick around for a while.
– And that’s it for now… time to go enjoy another Saturday night in downtown Memphis. And tomorrow will be an exciting day of drinking mimosas and watching Team I Don’t Care About and Other Team I Don’t Care About battle it out for the conference championship on Sleep Out’s new LCD wide-screen TV. If anything interesting happens, I’ll write about it. And if nothing interesting happens, I’ll write about it too. See you later…