La Sandia

When I have a blog I seem to start out great and then sort of teeter off after I've done couple posts. I then feel bad and want to make it up and apologize, I make promises that I know I won't keep. I'm trying really hard to be really good at keeping up with posting but life gets in the way and I don't post as often as I should or as much as I want to.

I've already told you about my job and how I love it, this last weekend I had to work a lot of hours in two days, not typical for me, but pretty typical throughout the industry. Friday was a particularly long day, I was away from home upwards of 14 hours, 12.5 of them actually spent at work. The 2.5ish hours I got as a break were spent eating and critique a restaurant. I was starving, we had been busy all day and I did not realize that it was past 3:30 pm before I got a break, this was after getting to work by 6 am, and having ate something in the car om the way to work.

Since I only had a short amount of time, at rush hour I might add, I had Betty and Johnny come to take me out to eat in a restaurant that is located near my work. We went to a place that I have been many times before and have almost always enjoyed the experience. La Sandia is a little Tequila Cantina in the Northfield shopping center, with plenty of parking all around, a slight walk though from the parking areas. It serves Mexican food at decent prices. The hostess was friendly and gave us the option of sitting in the happy hour section or the patio or in regular dinning area.

Our server was actually someone I knew from school, she could have been a little bit more attentive but took pretty good care of us. We were the only ones sitting in that area for a little while and it was hard to judge other servers or our server on other tables. From what I did observe of the other servers is that they are very friendly and try to accommodate requests.

I ordered the cantina nachos ($7.95 plus 2 for meat), which is actually an appetizer, with some skirt steak when it came out it was piled up like a mountain of food. I immediately grabbed a chip and dug in, the chips had a nice crunch and were just salty enough to make the dish have more flavor. I ordered it without jalapenos because of my extreme dislike for them, this did not take away from the dish at all in my mind, it might have made it better. The steak was juicy and succulent, protein that my body was craving. There was a pile of guacamole that was not enough for the size of the dish. Each component meshed with the others into a frenzy of tastes with none popping out as a dominant overlord in the flavor war, this was not a bad thing though. I tried my hardest but was unable to finish even half of the dish

Nachos

Betty was not that hungry, she went with a chopped salad ($8.95). It was average salad size and had crispy bacon bits, tomato, cheese, hard boiled egg and lettuce. Like so many Americans I love bacon, but in this instance the bacon did not fit, it was sweet and clashed with the cilantro, the clear winner of salad flavor war. The cheese was the clear loser with no flavor at all, might as well have been white cubes of nothing.

Chopped Salad

Johnny is half Mexican and grew up eating Mexican food a lot, but there is always one thing that he loves to have over any other dish, enchiladas. I was taught at a young age to make this classic Mexican dish and could have made the enchiladas ($9.50) better than this dining establishment. There was a small pile of pickled onion on top that did not make sense, it also translated into the enchiladas with an overwhelming taste of vinegar. This maybe the only time I say something like this, but there was no heat or spice to it when there should have been. The "Mexican" rice looked as if someone added a slight amount of tomato sauce, didn't taste much better.

Enchiladas

Overall: I would not go back for anything but the nachos, and I would bring a friend to help me eat the nachos.

Best part: The nachos, seriously and maybe the prices.

Worst part: I would have to say the enchiladas brought shame to the Mexican cuisine.

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Mexican | 8340 Northfield Blvd #1690, Denver, CO 303-373-9100 | $5-24 | Sun- Thurs 11-9; Fri-Sat 11-10 | all forms of payment