Tag Archives: Gran Plaza

The Casual Restaurant Critic Hitting and Missing at the Gran Plaza Mall

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Every once in a while, the Casual Restaurant Critic finds himself in the mall – the Gran Plaza mall to be exact – to do some banking, pay the CFE or TelCel or whatever, and the timing works out in such a way as to necessitate a bite to eat.  The question is always: where will it be this time? Such a situation occured twice in the past week, resulting in one hit, and one awful miss.

Besides the one or two restaurants in the mall, there is the hilariously-named Food and Food food court. Choices abound! Will it be the MSG-laden offerings of Win Fa’s Chinese food, with the promise of ever-lasting thirst for hours; or the line-up infused hamburgers of Burger King? Or perhaps deal with the indifferent doñas at Doña Gorda, who make deep-fried and oily gorditas that will inspire a rush on the local omeprazol supply? The salad place is sadly dead and gone with its healthy options and so other choices might be Alabama Mama with “southern food” or some fairly decent Trompos tacos (try their heart-valve-bursting nachos especiales if you really want to gorge yourself with calories.

The Critic, however, found two new additions to the Food and Food food court, one was a definite and resounding miss, while the other promises to be a hit.

The Miss

The Critic has a soft spot for entrepreneurs who make the effort to provide something new and in this case, it was a Yucatecan food outlet that calls itself Pibilxito (which in Mayan means absolutely nothing), among all those tacos and hamburgers and cheap pasta. It is exceedingly hard to please Yucatecans with Yucatecan food since everyone has an aunt or a mom or a grandma or a suegra who makes their favorite dish just so. It’s an impossible situation, the Critic believes, and this place will go the way of another attempt at Yucatecan fare that met its demise in this very same Food and Food food court years ago.

Some of the most famous Yucatecan items are on the menu like cochinita pibil, relleno negro and the Critics favorite, queso relleno, which he proceeded to order from the rather bored and uninspired young man alternately playing with his smart phone and looking up blankly at the zero clientele stopping there. The Critic paid his 70 pesos for an order, a full 10 pesos more than the other orders, a price point explained to him by the hapless employee with the help of a prop: an actual Queso de Bola marca Gallo kept under the counter to prove the worthiness of that 4 dollar expenditure.

The food, ordered to go and unpacked from its mismatched plastic and styro containers at home, was pretty well inedible. The Critic’s cat did, however, get into it and managed to down a few swallows of the unappealing white ground meat that had not a hint of a raisin, a caper or an almond, let alone an olive, accompanied by the afore-mentioned Gallo brand cheese, all served in the traditional corn flour kol. The tortillas that came with the order were of the store-bought variety, rounding out the exceptionally gnarly experience.

Highly not recommended. Avoid at all costs.

The Hit

Having just opened, the new Thai Bistro Express, an offshoot/expansion of the popular place by the same name in Chuburna (beach, not colonia) promises to be the real deal. The super-friendly, engaged and energetic owners are right there and are happy to see you, happy to explain their food offerings to you and happy to cook it for you too. What a difference a smile makes!

The Critic had the Pad Thai, with pork. It could have a little more punch to it but was very good in any case. The iced coffee is absolutely delicious and a treat in the land (Food and Food food court land) of Coca-Cola and other gaseous beverages. What the Critic liked best was the fact that the owner asked how it was and seemed genuinely interested in some constructive criticism, offered with the sincere interest in making their place a well-deserved success. Price of the meal? $120 pesos for Pad Thai and Iced Coffee.

A Quick Visit to KFC in the Gran Plaza Mall

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I am feeling hungry and the ticket guy at the movie theater won’t let me in ‘cuz he says it’s too early for the 4:10 showing of Spiderman which is the only new movie this week and I really don’t feel like watching last weeks offerings of Madagascar 17 and Ice Age 42 and the Mel Gibson rent-payer Get the Gringo which I downloaded illegally anyway from piratebay.org and watched on my laptop and was amazed at how bad it was so why pay to see it in the theater and so I walk by all the food vendors in the “food court” at the Gran Plaza mall, finally settling on KFC and some fried chicken.

If you want to screw up their little system ask for two pieces of chicken. Just the chicken. The initial smile from Yael, a chubby, effeminate and very ebullient little employee faded as he looked back at the menu board and then told me it would be more economical for me to order the combo, with two pieces of chicken, a styro container of their starchy instant mashed potato with the euphemistically named gravy, another styro container of their sugar and mayo laden cole slaw and a nourishing white flour biscuit as well as a soda to complete the fat intake. No, I just want the chicken, I told Yael. He hesitated, and then very professionally the smile returned to his round face and he charged me the 32 pesos.

My order was then passed on to another employee and I was sent along the counter to wait. I watched as the employee doing the actual placing of food in bags, double check with Yael to make sure that she had read correctly – only two pieces of chicken. Nothing else. Yes, Yael nodded, smiling at me. Meanwhile, an employee in the back of the restaurant, sucking back a refresco, was hugged and then kissed on the shoulder by another employee. The fact that they were both males did not startle me as much as they fact that they were in KFC and in full view of the public. I am convinced that in racially tolerant and sexually liberal Kentucky the idea of two Mexicans kissing in the local KFC would go over well.

Ruzzel – yes, that’s Ruzzel with two Z’s, another creative Yucatecan version of an English name – was in charge of handing the bag of food to the customer and carefully looked at the ticket, then at me.

“No va a querer refresco?” he asked, doubtfully.

“No”, I replied, “solo el pollo“.

After getting an affirmative nod from cheerful-again cashier Yael, he handed me my bag with two pieces of chicken and off I went to find a spot in the crowded mall to eat it. The chicken was hot and the original recipe still tasted pretty darn good.

Casual Movie Critic – Cell 211

Life in the Yucatan, Nada que Ver, , , , ,

This is a Spanish movie (ie from Spain) that has been suggested as a winner for several movie categories and people are talking about it. I went to see it and was, again, among a small group of about 10 people in the Gran Plaza movie theater.

The movie itself has myriad online reviews ranging from ‘absolutely brilliant’ to ‘whatever’ and my opinion falls somewhere in the middle. Certainly it’s better than the other two movies reviewed earlier, but that is not much of a challenge, although some of the so-called twists in the plot were expected and predictable.

It was, however, enormous fun to hear the original Spanish dialogue – especially all the colorful swearing! – and often required some real concentration because they speak so fast! If you don’t speak Spanish that well, you will most assuredly get nothing from this movie; and there are no subtitles, English, Spanish or otherwise, to fall back on.

Watch the trailer here.

Asadero Grill, Gran Plaza

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In the food court of the Gran Plaza, where the Critic found himself yesterday feeling hungry, there used to be a Subway sandwich shop, where the sandwiches were bland and the employees wore plastic gloves to protect themselves from germs as they handled both money, utensils and food with those same glove covered hands. But, RIP, Subway, because they just weren’t making enough money or the rent was too high or they ran out of plastic gloves or something; the thing is they closed and well, we shouldn’t beat a dead horse.

Why is the Critic even mentioning the sandwich shop? Because in it’s place, a new and exciting food option was opened to the public, something so novel that it deserves a mention here. Ladies and gentlemen, Asadero Grill is serving up tacos. Yes indeed, tacos; something the Gran Plaza hasn’t seen before if you leave out La Parrilla and Los Trompos who are there in the old section of the food court plus Sport Tortas and Tacos and Arrachera Grill (plus yet another taco place that opened just recently) across the way in the new section. In their efforts to provide more culinary diversity, the Gran Plaza folks have decided that since people are lining up for tacos when the mall is full, why not allow another taco restaurant to open?

The Critic is not going to get into the whole mall exclusivity thing which means about as much in Mexico as the constitution of many modern countries ie nothing, but concentrate on the usual, nit picking critiques he has become so well known (and loved) for.

Someone mentioned that the nachos were good, and since the Critic has tried the nachos at Los Trompos, this seemed like a good place to start. A combo, featuring those nachos along with a refillable refresco and a mini styro bowl of frijoles charros (a bean soup for the unenlightened) will run you $64 pesos or about 5 dollars USD. You get 300 grams of meat; either bistek (beef) pastor (marinated fatty pork) chicken and something else. You can combine two meats if you like. The Critic ordered pastor and bistek, got a plastic cup and a number and waited a few minutes for the order to come up.

Once the Critic had his tray, with the salsas and the onions and the lime wedges and the soup and the nachos and the plastic cup and the cutlery and the napkins, he sat down to enjoy this giant Mexican lunch.

The thing that strikes you about Asadero is that it seems like an exact copy of Los Trompos, a well known and very successful operation that has restaurants in strategic locations around town and in the malls.  Asadero has everything on their menu that Trompos has, including pizzas and stuffed baked potatoes. All the tacos and combos are there as well. The thing is, their prices are lower and this is bringing in the crowds, apparently.

Back to the nachos. These are the deep fried thick corn chips favored here, bathed in a rather earthy tasting black bean sauce, with a tasteless melted cheese, and covered in meat; chunks of bistek on one side, strips of pastor on the other. Somewhere in between is guacamole, along with some tomato slices and pickled jalapeno pepper slices. In other words, an exact copy of Los Trompos nachos, down to the placement of the tomato slices in the corners of the rectangular plastic plate!

Comparing the two, the Critic would say the Trompos version is a little tastier; the pastor meat and the refried brown beans are more flavorful. But the cheese is tasteless in either version and the salsas, which should be good, thick and zesty in a taqueria, are always disappointingly watery and bland.

Both make excessive use of disposable plastic and Styrofoam – their plastic cutlery is identical and useless for cutting or picking up a chunk of meat – and it is truly phenomenal the amount of garbage generated by not only the taco places, but all the restaurants in the food courts. Perhaps that will be something for another article in the future.

On a scale of Wow to Ew, this one rates Whatever.