Food-- Maria Chuchena

What makes food good? Is it the actual food or the experience of the restaurant? Most people would say that it's the food and in all reality I agree with that. Food is the essential component why we go to eat at a restaurant. The atmosphere makes the experience, but at the end of the night, and the day after, the food is what you rave about. I am no food critique. My delicate palate consists of bland oatmeal in the morning, baked chicken with frozen/microwaved "steamed" vegetables for lunch and microwaved popcorn for dinner with a nice refreshing diet coke. What a life?

Despite my sophisticated palate, I do believe I have the inherited knowledge of distinguishing between good food and great food.

I had the pleasure at dinning at Maria Chuchena this week, located at 5860 North Mesa Street, at first glance it looks like an upscale restaurant. The decor was mediocre, trying to be too upscale I believe, but I must admit the ambience was awesome. We were seated pretty fast even though it was lunch time and we were a group of ten. The waitstaff was excellent, no qualms about that, the menu was definitely another issue. When your are given 2 separate menus to look at it and to decide what to eat, in a rush mind you, the customer is rushed even if they are not.

There are too many choices and if you do not know this it is not your typical Mexican restaurant. It's an upscale version, I believe it's heavily influenced by Puebla's typical food, because most of our food was heavily sauced. The menu has your typical Mexican food items tacos, tortas, and enchiladas. But it also has items that I do not remember tasting on my Mexican travels to the south. As you are seated you order your drinks and to my surprise
they make your salsa table side. They make it with the "molcajete" and they ask if you want it spicy or mild. We ordered both versions and none were hot, but it was good salsa.

I ordered the Malinche, a chicken stuffed with corn mushrooms with a squash blossom sauce. My imagination of what the food would taste like was running wild and it seemed like an eternity for the food to arrive.

When I got my plate it seemed simple and when I tasted it was. I was disappointed! I dissect my food and when I removed the chicken from the sauce and removed the corn mushroom; and the chicken was dry. The corn mushroom lacked salt and the squash blossom sauce was extremely bland and if that was not enough the food was cold.

Overall, I was disappointed with my food my high expectations to be blown away were squashed, no pun intended. Maria Chuchena should really concentrate on what they serve and not the ambience. The quality of the food will keep you alive in the restaurant game and like they say one bad customer or unsatisfied customer can ruin you.