Text 5226, 88 rader
Skriven 2013-09-29 23:37:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: trip 238
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Saturday we'd planned to take the scenic Finger Lakes tour and
visit some wineries, including the Fords' favorite McGregor;
the day dawned rainy and ugly, but all that meant was more
wine tasting and less sightseeing. In sometimes blinding rain
it took us almost an hour to get to Burt and Shirley's place
in Newark.

The Fords had plans for us and started us off by driving us to
Rio Tomatlan, a favored Mexican restaurant in Canandaigua.
Burt framed this as that he wanted me to pass judgment on the
authenticity of the place. Well, I pointed out that haven't
been to Mexico in decades, but I'll do my best.

It's this unassuming, dark, dingyish place on a side street off
the main drag. Parking down the block. Burt dropped us off at
the door, as it was raining a bit, and otherwise we might have
had a hard time figuring out where it was and how to get in.

We were asked to choose between booth or table, and we chose
a table. It was soon discovered that there was a substantial
draft on this cool, damp day, and we were going to ask for a
less windy spot, whereupon the generally very helpful if
overworked waitress (she was the only waitress and seemed to
be doing some of the bartending and perhaps kitchen work as
well) offered to turn the ceiling fans off, which helped a ton.

As a certain amount of alcohol ingestion was the point of this
trip, I was the only one who drank anything besides water here:
a Negra Modelo, which was fresh and good.

We had an appetizer listed as queso fundido - this was nothing
like the queso fundido I've encountered before. What I'm used
to is a plate of broiled and/or flambeed Mexican melting cheese
with some chorizo slices or crumbles on top. The presentation
here is of little premade tacos with the cheese lightly melted
on top with crumbles. The flavor was quite good, but the fun
of playing with melted cheese was diminished (though the cheese
did in fact stretch and string somewhat).

Soft tacos with pork were similar - more or less what I had
expected, but of a muchness with the queso fundido. The pork
was a little on the bland side; I was hoping, after our
waitress had gushed "oh, I love our carnitas," that the meat
had been stewed in lard the traditional way. I think this had
been stewed the American way; though this is good, it's not
the way I prefer. There are four hot sauces on offer; all were
a little too vinegary (Tapatio was the least vinegary), and
only one, Salsa Habanero El Yucateco, had any hot to speak of.
The yellow rice and black beans that came with this plate were
very good and by their nature did well with hot sauce.

To balance things out, I ordered the mole poblano, chicken in
a sweetish black sauce made with chocolate and cinnamon, served
with white rice: pretty good, the mole probably from a reputable-
brand pouch but without the depth of a proper handmade one (which
I sort of doubt is gettable at restaurants these days; you have
to make your own).

It was a pleasant but restrained meal, as we'd had an appetizer
to split and just two main courses; so we all had just that little
bit of room left for dessert. The waitress offered three, and we
couldn't decide among them, so I cut the Gordian knot by asking
for one of each and four spoons.

Flan was a rather ordinary thing, classic, very very good actually
(even bad flan is a little bit good), pronounced egg and vanilla
flavors, good smooth texture and appetizing color; its caramel
syrup was the usual.

Chocolate flan - I didn't like this much, and the out of the
ordinariness was part of the problem. Not that I'm a stick in
the mud. It came in two layers - a plain rather unrich chocolate
cake and a quite rubbery brown pudding that I suppose might have
been stiffened with gelatin -, and I wasn't impressed by either.

Tres leches cake was rich and good and loaded with dairy products,
which I thought I had properly tamed with a half dozen pills, but
I was wrong. A rather coarse-grained cake soaked in lots of milk,
it was not quite what I expected, because I like caramel or dulce
de leche in my tres leches. I looked it up later - what I have
come to know as tres leches cake is really cuatro leches cake. I
spent much of the next half hour on the (quite clean) can, while
the rest chatted away. When I returned for the last time Burt
had treated, and there was no going back from that.

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