A So-So Theme Restaurant

Lee's Taco Garage
8403 Broadway, just inside Loop 410

Another fall-back restaurant. This time we wanted to go to Capparelli's on Broadway, but it's either closed for remodelling or out of business. Heading inside the Loop, we spotted a large, somewhat garish building that I thought said "Taco Grande," and the why-the-hell-not approach landed us in their parking lot. 

Last city inspection: November 30, 2010
24 demerits

Space is tight in there, and traffic is one way; to leave, you have to go down the alley behind, which takes you through an potholed obstacle course to either the Loop 410 access road to the north, or a small side-street to the south. Or you could do like the driver of a sign-company pickup truck did while we were there, and try to back out to Broadway, hoping nobody tries to come in while you're doing that. (He eventually gave up and went down the alley.)

The restaurant itself is similarly casual in layout. There must be a main entrance, somewhere up toward the avenue, but we didn't see it. we saw the middle section, by the parking lot entrance. There was also a back room, making a total of maybe 30 to 35 tables in the place. We chose one of the few available clean tables, near the egress from the kitchen. 

You know how, when you knock a little hole in a dike, the water rushing out has a lot of force right near the dam, but soon is spent? That's how we felt, sitting there. Wait staff rushed by like water gushing from a hole. There seemed to be a whole lot of waitrons, too, but after an initial flurry of menu-bringing and drink-bringing, there was a lull. A long lull. Then someone brought chips and salsa. Then more chips and salsa. Then, after what seemed like an age, our waitress stopped by long enough to take our order. The food came soon enough after that, but the check didn't arrive until we'd already started a pool on how long it'd take getting there.

The sort of tag-team table-waiting that Lee's Taco Garage appears to engage in is either very well done, as at J Alexander, or very poorly done, as here. There seems to be no middle ground. One waitress seemed to be devoting her entire effort to one table of three people near the door; she must have visited them half a dozen times while we were in the place, and we didn't see her tending to any other table.

The interior of the Taco Garage is fairly large, and decorated in accordance with its theme of "Tex-Mex Cruizine": hanging lamps made from engine parts; a rack of magazines worthy of any auto-shop waiting room; a few old (or fake-old) advertising signs. In one area, near the restrooms, a woman makes tortillas behind a large sneeze-guard. The walls are orange. On this cloudy day, the overall impression was of darkness, despite the glass wall on the southern exposure. It looked unkempt. When we arrived, there were a number of unoccupied tables, but only two that had been bussed. At least one of the cluttered tables remained untouched the entire time we were in the room. For all the staff at the Taco Garage, there seem not to be enough people whose job description includes busing tables. 

The menu continues the theme: lunch plates are "licensed plates." Clever. Enchiladas come under the rubric "Wrenchiladas," and margaritas are "high-octane" drinks, while soft drinks and coffee are, of course, "unleaded." Desserts are "tail lights"; surprisingly, appetizers are not "starters." We both selected quesadilla plates: norteño for me, primo for Rick.

I didn't care for the chips or salsa at Taco Garage. For probably the first time in my life, I added salt to the tostadas, but it didn't help. The first tasted like soap; the second like soap with salt. I'd call them inedible were it not for the fact that Rick sucked down the entire first bowl and half of the second. He also seemed to approve of the roasted-pepper salsa, which I thought tasted like the peppers had been allowed to roast too long. Anyone who has tried roasting peppers knows how quickly they go from "done" to "burnt," so some leeway has to be allowed, and I'll say no more about that.

Rick's quesadillas primo consisted of beef fajita and cheese, lots of cheese, pressed between two fried flour tortillas. It's hard to ruin so basic a dish, and as hard to excel at it. Nothing about it was remarkable, other than the generous portion of cheese. It wouldn't have hurt to leave the meat on the grill another half a minute, but it was acceptable. The quesadillas were accompanied by rice and beans (choice of refried or borracho; we both chose borracho), a dollop of sour cream, and a large dose of guacamole. The beans were well-seasoned and tasty, but the serving was a little on the stingy side. Given that they were the best thing on either of our plates, the kitchen might want to make the portions larger. The other sides were only so-so: the rice a little dry (but I found that, added to the beans, it made a delicious protien-laden blend), the guacamole bland. 

My quesadillas norteño consisted of beef, peppers and onions folded into corn tortillas, accompanied by rice, beans, and a small lettuce, tomato and avocado salad, which a smear of Rick's sour cream made tolerable. The peppers and onion on my quesadillas had only the barest acquaintance with the grill, and so were lacking in flavour and disturbing in texture. The tortillas, at least, were pretty good.