More on tacos: La Potranca

Every now and then, after working out at the gym or playing a few games of racquetball, my friend Rick and I will head over to La Potranca, a taqueria on Jones-Maltsberger Road, north of Starcrest. After forays throughout the north-central area in search of the elusive taco de buen calidad, it was one of a couple of places between the Loops that we had settled on as being OK enough to go back to (the other being Tacqueria Los Potrillos, on Starcrest; see my December 11 post on that place).

I have to revise that assessment. After several more visits, I've decided that La Potranca is unacceptable.

The food is just okay. The chilaquiles recipe is close enough to what I think of as authéntico (I don't know why this blogger will let me put an accent over an e, but not over an i) to pass muster, but lately the tortillas are overcooked, which gives them the texture of wet cardboard. The coffee's good enough, too; not the best, but not the worst by a long shot. And the ambience is fine, actually quite a bit nicer than the places I've come to like best.

What kills La Potranca is the service. Normally if you get bad service one time in a restaurant, you figure it's probably an aberration; the first time we had mediocre service at La Potranca, it was, we believed, because school was out for the holidays and the owners' kids were working; and they didn't have the job down pat. So we went back, and service was fair the next time.

But the last several times we've been, it's like this: there are two or three people behind the counter, though I hesitate to say they're working. One appears always to be reviewing papers. One comes and goes as though making deliveries to the back door. One seems to stare into space, but he or she (it varies) may be watching something on the grill, or waiting for something to appear on the grill. And there will be one or two people whose function may be to serve customers.

What does that mean?

But when you go into a place with only about a dozen tables, and only three or four of them occupied, you kind of expect that one person can take care of those customers adequately. With a little ambition, a single "waitron" -- the politically correct term coined, unsuccessfully, by a friend of mine more than fifteen years back -- might even be able to suffocate the few customers with excessive attention. So why is it that we end up staring in the direction of the kitchen, hoping for a glimpse of someone with a coffee pot, or someone who might have access to a coffee pot? Why must we either wait with ebbing patience for someone to just glance in our direction, so we can hoist the coffee cup and convey the idea that we might like some more? Oh, yeah, we could get up off our fat asses (though I am on the verge of taking my belt in another notch; I shiver with anticipation, or maybe it's just the weather lately) and go over there, or we could make rude shouting noises, and believe me we've thought about it. It's what I'd do if we were at Timo's the little coffee shop down the street from my house, where the owners are by way of being friends of mine and I feel comfortable going into the kitchen my own damn self and getting what I want. I don't know these people at La Potranca, and they don't know me: I'm just a customer to them, who needs to be pleased enough to come back. And honey, that ain't happening.