Takeria El Santos x

 The place that brought Mexican cuisine to Latvia but forgot to add its spirit

This is another restaurant in Riga with delicious food but misguided interior choices and lack of character. You can see that they care and they tried but somehow failed to ask for a professional advice when setting the whole thing up. 

Just as Spice Thai Fusion described in my previous review, Takeria is too big for those few random customers who manage to stumble upon it, stuffed with objects of unclear purpose (that grandma’s chair, for instance. Because the place was hardly set up with a "grandma's house" concept in mind), and completed with a name that you will get wrong nine times out of ten. 

But let’s dig into the food. For starters, we got Aztec soup (3 Euro) – a spicy tomato soup with chicken, cheese and few corn tortillas. It was mildly spicy and rich in flavor but the cheese was sticky and clumped together into one solid mass. I suspect they did not go for top quality cheese here, as seemed to be the case in other dishes, too. Well, I am not an expert on what kind of cheese is the right one for real Mexican food but really good one is widely available in Latvia and inexpensive. Just saying. 

Guacamole (6 Euro) with a giant corn chip on top looked impressive and tasted almost heavenly. There could be more chips to accompany the green mass, but then you would have less stomach space for other good stuff.

Chicken flautas (8 Euro) with salsa verde sauce (named just "green sauce" in the menu) was my first choice for the main courses because of the sauce. I am a huge fan of salsa verde,  and whatever it comes with is secondary to me - be it flautas, burrito, hot dog or piece of dry bread. According to an experienced Mexican food eater, The flautas were not 100% authentic with a fluffy soft (possibly flour?) wrapping and not the typical thin and crunchy fried corn tortilla. As for me, just more salsa verde would be great. At least as much as there was "red sauce" on our next main. 

Enchiladas (8 Euro) came in an abundant amount of sauce which was less than impressive. Or maybe just less impressive than the green one. Not that it was bad but a few days later after the dinner, I am having trouble remembering how it tasted, so probably nothing to blow your mind. Lots of the same cheese from the soup didn't add to the score.

Our stomachs were full but the dessert could not be resisted - and it turned out to be the decision of the week. Or the month. There were two options on the menu and anyone who went for churros instead of the fried banana (5 Euro) would never forgive themselves if only they knew what they missed. I will not reveal the mystery of what it is so that you have to go and check for yourself, but it involves watching a banana being set on fire in a bath of vanilla cream and tequila mix. 

But who knows, maybe those who went for churros are telling similar stories. I will have to go and find out.

Dinner, a couple of beers and margarita came to ~40Euro.

Final score: 3/5. 

Takeria El Santos X

Pils iela 7, Rīga, LV-1050

https://www.facebook.com/ElSantoXRestorans/