El Rodeo
6900 Center Street
Mentor, OH 44060
440-205-8740
Finding myself really wanting some tacos for lunch. I headed over to El Lobo to grab a quick bite with some friends. To my disappointment though, they were closed. As if being open during the week would be an unwise business decision.
Still craving tacos and not wanting to resort to fast food, we decided to try a Mexican restaurant I had never been to before, El Rodeo in Mentor. I had heard good things about the place, specifically $0.99 tacos. Mui bueno!
Just walking into the place provides you with an unstoppable assault on your optic nerve. Bright colors! Holy shit! Its as if Dr.Suess decorated the place after a weekend bender pounding tequila and taking in the Donkey Show in Tijuana. Pure insanity. My head hurts just remembering it all.
Maybe it just seemed so obnoxious because the place was almost empty and the designers relied on human beings to break up all the color. By the way, an empty restaurant at One in the afternoon is probably not a good sign.
We were seated in the back of the restaurant at the most gigantic table ever built. I sat myself in a chair that would have gotten the approval of Montezuma. It was definitely fat-people-friendly. I could have done jumping jacks on it without it even creaking.
Ok, now to the reason you are taking the time to read this drivel, the food. Our waiter brought us two large baskets of homemade tortilla chips that were excellent. The salsa he brought left a bit to be desired, as it was a bit too runny and could have used some more cilantro. While eating the chips and salsa I perused the extensive menu. And by extensive I mean an absolutely ridiculous number of items. I guarantee it was pushing 200! It was the size of a hot damn Steven King novel. It took me 10 minutes to find the tacos, and they weren’t even on the menu! At $0.99 a piece they seemed like a steal, so I ordered two chicken and two beef in soft corn tortillas.
They came out of the kitchen wrapped in foil like a little Mexican birthday present. The birthday-boy got four very good looking tacos with lettuce and freshly grated queso-fresco. But you know what they saw about judging something by the way it looks……looks like you’re gonna have to find another Mexican restaurant.
The tacos were atrocious. The chicken was completely flavorless and the beef had a very weird flavor that didn’t agree with my tongue. To top it off, the tortilla shortage, due to all of you assholes pushing Ethanol on everyone, has finally hit home, because I only got one tortilla per taco. And you if you know anything about tacos, you know that’s one tortilla too little. By the time I picked up my first taco the tortilla was mush. I had to cup it in my hand and shovel it into my mouth like some kind of degenerate. Eventually, I resorted to a fork. That pretty much says it all right there; eating tacos with a fork.
It was just a terrible meal all around at El Rodeo. Other than the chips, I can’t think of anything that I enjoyed. The bad part is that these kind of Mexican restaurants, serving the flavorless classics of our neighbors to the South, keep popping up everywhere. If you notice though, Mexican people never eat in these places. That ought to tell you something.
Some other posts you might enjoy:
