It was Earl’s turn to choose a restaurant last night. (Since we’re both only children, we tend to keep score on this sort of thing.) He chose El Sol Azteca, a small Mexican restaurant tucked in a non-descript strip mall.
“You don’t even like Mexican food,” I said, not really trying to dissuade him. I do like Mexican food. But we usually go for the larger, more popular, more raucous Mark III, which coincidentally is directly across the highway from El Sol.
The Mark III is a favorite watering hole and lines for tables form early on weekends. I suspect El Sol has never had a line, but perhaps gets spill-over customers who don’t want to wait across the road.
Earl said he was unexplainably hungry for a burrito and wanted to try something different. He was also thirsty for a good Margarita. And we had a coupon, which explains everything.
The bottom line is that El Sol Azteca is the real deal. The food is fresh, made-to-order, and appealing. It’s not American-Mex or Tex-Mex. It’s Mex-Mex. The portions are appropriate too, something that’s hard to find in our over-sized culture. But what identifies El Sol as authentic is that there wasn’t a single crunchy corn tortilla pre-shaped like a taco shell in the place.
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