So What's for Dinner?

One of our goals for December has been to discover new Mexican restaurants that are not in the tourist areas.  For the last 10 years of being weekly vacation visitors to Mazatlan 95% of our dining out has been in the tourists parts of town.

It was time to move back into the interior areas and dine with the locals.

I'll tell you about two new dinning adventures we have taken this last week. 

The first dinner was not planned but we found ourselves hungry and we weren't near home so we rolled the dice and dropped into an open air taco restaurant.  It was nice and clean and brightly lit up in the dark evening.

Terri ordered open faced pollo (chicken) tacos and I ordered arrrachera (steak) torta (sandwich) the highest priced item on the menu.  When the plates arrived Terri had three loaded tacos ready to be covered in the condiments they brought.  We tested the heat level of each condiment before applying an unknown fire to our meals.  They all passed our tests but I choose to go with a little less burn than Terri.

I forgot to take a picture until we were half done.

Our dinners were delicious and we will go back again sometime to try other items on the menu.  Dinner for 2 including 2 glass bottles of ice cold Coke came to 101 pesos.  Now for your math lesson, 13.125 pesos to the dollar exchange rate.  That's about 76 cents per 10 pesos.  Which brings us to a total of about $7.70 US for the both of us for a good dinner.

Now having gone expensive on our last dining experience we stopped into an even smaller restaurant for our next adventure.  We found ourselves in Centro (old downtown) when it was time to eat after an afternoon of Christmas decoration shopping.

This time our dining room also included the two cook stoves and kitchen sink all in one room.  The whole restaurant was much smaller than my mothers kitchen and dining room.  We don't often think of a restaurant as having the kitchen and dining area all in the same room.  But for the first 2 decades of my life that was how dinner was served at our house.  I guess I just need to adjust my thinking on how a restaurant should be set-up.

Terri ordered three pollo tacos and I was excited to find sopas on the menu so I ordered three of my favorites.  Now after the nice waitress took our orders she put on her apron and became the chief cook.  While another lady prepared all the veggie portions of the meal the chef began frying the tortillas/sopas and cooking the meat portions of the meal.

The great part of all this is that we could watch the whole process.  I guess if we were dining in a high-end restaurant in the states we might be seated at a bar watching the chef work.  It seemed a little different to be doing it in Mexico, but when in Mexico do as the Mexicans do.

After the chef was done cooking she walked 10 feet from the stove to deliver our two very good meals.

This time the cost of our two meals and two Cokes was 90 pesos. Now for you math geniuses that was $6.85 for the two of us happy diners.

Life is good in Mazatlan.  We will have a hard time spending our "Old Age Pension Checks" this month.