Restaurant Review: Rosa Mexicano

So tonight I tried Rosa Mexicano, which is supposedly a pretty authentic Mexican restaurant (I don't tend to believe that, but I guess I was told if a "Mexican" restaurant does not have burritos, it is a good indication that it is the real thing, however, I take the fact that we are not actually in Mexico with a grain of salt).

First of all, the service was phenomenal.  Extremely fast.  We were starving, so we put in the order for guacamole as we sat down and it was there no more than a minute after the waiters (yes, waiters, one was in training) left.  And it seemed like we had barely finished that when our actual food came.  The waiters were attentive, and had good recommendations.  When I asked about the mole (how do you put accentuated characters in posts?) sauce he offered to bring me a sample.  Honestly, I was too hungry and too focused on the food to notice much, but the whole dinner seemed to fly by, which in this case, speaks well to the efficiency of the restaurant.  Also, with my take home box, they included fresh rice and beans, rather than the leftovers from dinner, which ensures that it will be a complete second meal, rather than the smaller half that I sometimes end up with.  They had some Dia de los Muertos specials (yes, that was 18 days ago) that sounded fantastic, but way to big, like an 18 oz steak with sides... yeah, that's like a week's worth of meals for me...

The guacamole is one of their specialties, they make it at the table, which is pretty cool, and the guacamole maker has 90 seconds to make it, he told me.  And it was awesome, probably because it was so fresh.  And because we were famished.  They also included two salsas, I liked the spicy tomatillo one, it had a hint of mint.  By the time we were done, bam there were our entrees!  I got the Mole de Xico beef enchiladas because I was craving steak and the mole sauce was fantastic, like hot chocolate with cinnamon and nutella (which is a basic version of what it was).  Very filling and very complex.  And I don't know that I've had a good mole before this (the waiter said they are all the same and I probably just didn't like it, but I tried the sample and knew that they are NOT all the same).

Dessert really would have rounded off the meal, especially something Mexican chocolate, but we were just too full.  So that would be my recommendation.  I probably would have gotten the you pick 3 ice cream/sorbets.

In summary: great food, some of the best Mexican I've found north of, well, Mexico, awesome service, interesting ambiance.  My only complaint was it's a little pricy, but hey, the exceptional food alway is, right?

Cinco de Mayo

At least since taking Spanish in middle school, I've always celebrated Cinco de Mayo, through food. When it falls on weekends, I've gone out for Mexican with my parents (when I've been home), and this year I decided to try to cook the most authentic meal I could.

I'm still not at the point where I am making my own recipes, especially for ethnic stuff. But at least that maintains some of their authenticity, right? For our cinco de mayo feast we made Enchiladas verdes (which are probably my favorite Mexican food), stuffed peppers and flan! It was a lot of work, but it was delicious! Actually, the flan was the only thing that was particularly hard, but coordinating everything around that wasn't easy. I apparently am terrible at melting sugar and putting it evenly into custard cups. I'll post the recipes below, and just to note, we made 8 custard cups, which meant we needed a little extra sugar to spread over the bottoms. But I can do it now, at least. A better flan recipe is surely out there, but I liked this one because it was made to serve 4, my family of 4 even had leftovers (probably because a serving was what the recipe called half a serving). Unfortunately, I do not have the recipe for rice (my mom made it) used to stuff the peppers, but we basically stuffed peppers with Spanish rice and baked them with a little cheese on top (we wanted to keep them vegetarian and simple as to not overpower the enchiladas). I should have blanched the peppers ahead of time, but we didn't have any clean pans after making the flan and I just wanted to get them started.
Enchiladas- I (obviously) added cilantro to the green sauce. Apparently they were kind of spicy, I didn't really notice in taste, but they definitely cleared my sinuses. If you don't like spicy, back off on the peppers (or at least seed them, I didn't because I just chopped off the tops and threw them in the water. I thought it was the perfect level of spiciness, but hey, that's just me. I think my heat tolerance has increased a lot this year (it was pretty decent to begin with) from all the Asian/Indian food we eat out.
Flan-Like I said, there are definitely better recipes out there (and probably easier, if you make it in one dish, rather than individual ones), but this one served four.