The Casual Restaurant Critic would like to inform the 19 readers of this blog that Mexico – and even Merida – has joined the ranks of the cities, states and countries that have imposed upon their citizenry smoking controls of some sort.

While in Canada, the Critic noticed that not only are there no more ‘smoking sections’ anywhere to be found in restaurants or bars, there is no smoking outside the restaurants or bars either, and a new bylaw in the city of Vancouver for example, now prohibits smoking within ‘6 meters of any entrance’ to the building. This means, wherever there are several small shops and restaurants together, like Robson or Denman streets for example you can’t really get 6 meters away from any entrance. The Critic calculated in several areas that the ‘smoking hot spot’ (and it could be labeled as such, much like the WiFi hot spots in public areas) was in the middle of the street.

Of course there are ways around this; Canadians are generally very law-abiding but the smoking crowd is a little more rebellious. At many Starbucks locations, for example, smokers (or staff?) have moved one or two outdoor tables away from the other ones thereby creating a 6 meter illusion and bonafide smoking area. I mean, who can imagine coffee without a cigarette?

And now Merida has joined in in the no smoking fun. The Casual Restaurant Critic went to have a salad at Italianni’s and there were no smoking signs everywhere and the place smelled of ozone. Those little injectors are everywhere it seems. Same experience at La Tradición. Also, at La Susana in Kanasin! The Critic was amazed at how civilized Merida has become.

It seems, however a little silly, all this fuss about smoking, when when people are literally losing their heads in drug wars, the land is being cemented over, every last living green thing is being chopped down, the water table is being contaminated, people still can’t drive and there’s no one to teach them, poverty is growing among the poor in the Yucatan’s countryside at an alarming rate along with drug use and crime, wages are stagnant, and and and. But now we have no smoking in restaurants and this is progress at last.

On the road…

Do you like Thai? The Critic likes Thai.

In Las Vegas, hidden in an ugly shopping center on Sahara called (it’s an original name no doubt) Commercial Center, is Lotus of Siam.

Lotus of Siam, if you do some digging on the internet, has a lot of fans! The accolades and magazine and major newspaper write-ups can be read in their entirety while you are waiting for a table, since they are posted in their tiny waiting room, where you will wait for a table as your nose starts to send urgent messages to your stomach as a result of the aromas emanating from the kitchen. “Best Thai Restaurant in North America” says one such article. Oh yeah, you say which magazine said that? Gourmet magazine that’s who.

The Critic does not know if it is the best in North America or Las Vegas (or even Sahara Blvd for that matter) but it is extremely good and highly recommended. A meal here will be better, more satisfying and much more delicious than someplace on the strip or in one of the hotels.

The Critic usually orders more or less the same things: the Pad Thai, which, if you are familiar with, is a complex mixture of flavors and textures when done right and a mass of peanut-y goo when screwed up. Here it’s the former. Also there is the soup, whose name once again escapes me, but it has lemon grass, coconut milk, shitaake mushrooms, ginger and is served in a pot to share with whomever is lucky enough to be sitting across from you.

Crispy duck is a must – there are three kinds, one is a little simple with Thai basil; another features a curry sauce and a third features…. something else. They are all delicious, having tried them on previous occasions, but the favorite has got to be the sauce-less one. It is such a flavor explosion in your mouth, if you include a basil leaf or two in your bite of duck, that you will think you have died and gone to heaven.

On this occasion the Critic asked for a recommendation and the waitress suggested crab salad. This was some kind of crab meat, lightly dusted and then quickly deep fried and served on a mixture of fresh salad greens that had a sweetish dressing on them. The taste of this dish was very light, fresh and delicate; have this one before the duck, definitely.

No room for dessert as usual, and the bill, with a beer or two, usually comes to under 60 dollars for two people. For that kind of money on the strip, you might get a main course for one.

Go there if you love Thai.

On the road…

Just outside of Las Vegas, on the way to the Hoover Dam, lies this charming little hamlet, which deserves a stop on it’s own because it is really quite lovely. However, the reason the Critic stopped here on his way to the Dam, is because the concierge at the Palace said “stop at the Coffee Cup; it’s great”.

These are the kind of local, insider tips a food addict like the Critic loves and appreciates, so not stopping was not even an option.

It’s a diner, it’s on the main street in Boulder City and it’s reeaal casual. No uniforms, no “hi I’m Madison and I’ll be your server”, no maitre’d, no celebrity chef photo hanging outside. It’s great! Finally, the real thing!

The Critic had the Chicken Fried Steak with eggs and hash browns. Huge, somewhat greasy and extremely satisfying!

Breakfast for two here will run you about $20 or less and is a welcome break from the crowds, the plastic and the blinking, flashing lights of Las Vegas.

On the Road…

The Water Street Café is another Vancouver restaurant that has been around for a long time, and while not part of a chain as far the Critic can tell, it has survived and maintained a stellar reputation as a great place for lunch or dinner.

It’s located on Water Street, an original name for a street that ran along the edge of the… water, in historic Gastown. After living in Mexico and particularly the Yucatan for the last 20 years, the Critic always smiles when coming across anything ‘historic’ in the Vancouver area. The whole damn country is only about 100 plus years old!

There is a small but delectable menu, a decent wine list, good service and the room itself is casually elegant. The fact that it is located right in front of Gastown’s main attraction, an old steam clock that blows strains of the national anthem (the Canadian one of course) every fifteen minutes and then a whole chorus on the hour, makes for good people watching while sipping on your wine. Watch the Japanese tourists jostling for position in front of the steaming, whistling clock to get their souvenir photograph. Great stuff.

Try the oysters (pictured above) pan fried and then served in this indescribably delicious sauce that will have you dragging the remains of your bread, trying to get all the gravy, because, like Ricardo Montalban used to say, it’s good to the last drop.

A tradition for the Critic and the MidiCritic (not to be confused with the MiniCritic) the other dish always ordered is the Penne with BC smoked salmon in a light creamy sauce. Again, absolutely fantastic.

The MidiCritic always orders the same dish, the details of which usually escape the Critic’s Alzheimer’s-deluded/diluted mind. However, thanks to editing capabilities and occasional flashes of short-term memory, one can come back and edit, right? There it is right in the photo for crying out loud. It’s homemade gnocchi stuffed with cheese and served in a pumpkin squash sauce and it is again, excellent.

The Water Street Café is a great place for lunch or dinner. Highly recommended.

On the Road…

The Keg has been a Vancouver institution for over 20 years and it is encouraging to see a Vancouver restaurant chain that has lasted this long and is still doing well.

On one occasion, after work on a payday, the Critic and several co-workers of the now defunct-Sheraton Villa Inn in Burnaby visited the Keg and spent practically the whole paycheck on dinner, shots, and wine… the days of youth and irresponsibility!

The Critic hadn’t visited the Keg for the same amount of time and it was a pleasant surprise to find the food still good, the ambiance friendly and a little more sophisticated than the rustic Canadiana of yore and the food was just as the Critic remembered it.

Mushrooms Neptune are STILL on the menu, as are the scallops wrapped in bacon, a perennial Keg favorite and classic. Stuffed with cream cheese and seafood, the mushroom caps are good in that comfort food kind of way and the scallops are tender morsels with the bacon giving them the needed kick, flavor wise. The Spinach and Crab dip was also tasty, again featuring cream cheese and the baked Goat Cheese was excellent, served with a cooked salsa that had just a little bit of picante.

Also (the Critic was accompanied by the MiniCritic) the Caesar Salad was ordered and a French Onion soup. The salad was so good that the MiniCritic, who detests salads, devoured half of it in record time – would that the Trotters could try it! The soup was hot, savory and covered in crouton and swiss cheese.

Good food, albeit a little heavy on the cheesy-creamy-thick side, with decent service and relaxed surroundings including several fireplaces along with a glass of Merlot made for a pleasant cool Vancouver evening.

On the Road…

If you have a layover at the airport in Houston, as the Critic did just a little while ago, of any considerable time, one option besides sitting around in those uncomfortable chairs with your eyes glazed over is to have a meal at Pappadeaux, the seafood restaurant owned by the Pappas people who also run a great steakhouse and a Greek restaurant as well if the Critic is not mistaken.

The service is fine, in that chirpy I’m Ricardo and I’ll be your server today kind of way and the food while expensive is very good especially when one considers the myriad and mediocre fast food options available.

The Critic had the Blackened Redfish which came smothered with a shrimpy creamy sauce and was absolutely delicious and a very large portion too. Coconut shrimp were simply alright – you can get better at La Pigua in Campeche or Merida and the lobster bisque was satisfyingly rich but you wouldnt write home about it anytime soon.

There was no room for dessert, although they all looked delicious.

A good way to spend an hour or more in a pleasant setting enjoying some good food before getting on the plane and having to eat a tasteless microwaved sandwich, if you are lucky enough to get even that these days.

In response to the long comment on the Carreta Cubana II post, the Casual Restaurant Critic thinks it may be pertinent to answer this in ‘post’ form.

Service in Merida’s restaurants is alright; it’s just not professional in the gran mayoria de los casos and often a result of no one training anyone – there is no waiter’s training program anywhere that the Critic is aware of. Too often personnel is hired with only minimum requirements: that they live close by, that they have a white shirt or something similar. Niggling details like not sticking your arm and the inevitable armpit in front of a restaurant patron while serving a plate (with the inevitable whiff of BO – really a horrible thing to have happen to you – or their Mennen Speed Stick – equally disagreeable) are rarely passed on to service personnel.

How do locals handle it? Well, in many cases people are not particularly concerned and have become accustomed to lackluster service. Merida is not Barcelona or Manhattan, so the dining options as well as the patrons do not have that level of sophistication or neuroses. Go with the flow is definitely the way to go.

To the Casual Restaurant Critic it is part of the charm of living in the Yucatan. You don’t expect professional Smith and Wollensky service for the most part. (You do however expect professional service at Joe’s Stone Crab and when they treat you like crap you let ’em have it and they try to make nice). Here waiters try, and usually do, a passable job. What is most upsetting to the admittedly neurotic foreigner is when hundreds of thousand of real dollars are invested in lighting, landscaping, architecture, menu printing, table linens, glassware, cutlery, kitchen equipment and advertising; and the owner hires a mediocre manager who hires even more mediocre service staff, some apparently culled from the garden staff, who have absolutely NO knowledge of gastronomy, what a Caesar salad might be, the difference between a salad and a dinner fork, white and red wine glasses, etc etc. And they don’t train them either! That is unforgivable, in those particular cases.

As a foreigner thinking of moving to Mexico, one should definitely go with the flow, reduce expectations and learn to relax. It’s not that important in the general scheme of things. And certainly not worth getting one’s panties in a bunch.

From the sublime to the ridiculous might be the title of this post, in which the Casual Restaurant Critic, after visiting La Recova the other day, along with the BH and the MC dropped by La Carreta Cubana II for some Yucatecan food in the form of botanas which are served (as they are in Heladios and a million other cantina crossover restaurants in Merida) along with a drink order.

This local hangout, kind of run down and a little on the dirty side is tucked away in a neighborhood between Plaza Fiesta area and Prolongación Paseo de Montejo and is not worth seeking out. It may be a local favorite (at least for some locals) and it is cheap, but the food is nothing to write home about, the service is mediocre at best and the ambience is nil, a few notches below the point where charming becomes just plain ugly.

A round of beers means that you get a sampling of botana (snacks or tapas) which consisted of the following (more or less):

• pickled beets
• runny sikil pak (pumpkin seed and roasted tomato dip; it’s not supposed to be THIS runny)
• salsa
• sliced white bread aka ‘frances‘
• a mayonnaise-y dip
• boiled and possibly pickled pigs ear, chopped
• cold tortillas
• other mysterious little plates of things

Are you smacking your lips yet? OK, admittedly this is not Nectar but still, the whole experience was less than satisfying. The plates are the beig colored plastic ones, some with cracks and chips along with a few porcelain cup saucers.

An order of relleno negro and cochinita came but it was completely un-exceptional and the cold machine made or store bought or whatever tortillas were a complete turn-off.

There are a billion places like this in Merida where the biggest draw is how cheap it is. This lunch was about $100 pesos. Cheap doesn’t have to be synonymous with this however. Look at La Susana in Kanasin. It’s ridiculously cheap but is nowhere near the dumpiness of this place.

If you want to try this traditional Yucatecan lunch, go to Heladios or Los Henequenes.

On a scale of one to five, this place rates a solid 1.

Being as it was the weekend, the Critic’s BH decided that the family should attempt to make a dent in the Guru restaurants Saturday buffet.

The buffet is a home made affair with the steam table ware a little haphazardly placed; as a result it’s not easy to get to the food in some cases, which is also affected by the lack of readily visible serving spoons.

But the food is wonderful and everyone raved about it. There is a modest selection to choose from at the buffet but since it is Lebanese food, it is extremely filling and you really can’t go nuts unless you are of course well-endowed in the digestive department. In the salad department, there is only one, a tabbouleh. The Critic assumes it is good, since the rules of engagement surrounding the preparation of a tabbouleh are beyond the scope of his knowledge base. There are two types of filled savory pastries; the one stuffed with leaves (grape?) and the other with meat. There is kibi crudo and bola. Garbanza and labne as well as berenjena aka eggplant. Rices abound. Cabbage rolls and little grape vine rolls stuffed with meat and rice.

It’s all good! Tasty and homemade!

At $150 a head (not including drinks) it seems reasonable enough for the level of satisfcation that can be achieved for that amount.