So since we’ve moved away from Texas the search for outstanding Mexican food has taken us to various restaurants around the Denver metropolitan area. Tonight we went to one of the worst, if not the worst Mexican restaurants yet, 3 Margaritas. We arrived at approximately 5:30 ready to eat. We were seated promptly and then I went to the bathroom where I was presented with advertisements at the urinal for various male adult related services (including a ‘Hot women’ salon where apparently attractive women will cut your hair). When I got back to the table I looked at the menus and most everything looked ‘normal’ for a Mexican restaurant. When I ordered I ordered the Carne Azada, which is a pretty typical meal for me to order. Jessica got some sort of spinach quesadilla. Abby was ordered the toquitos.

After waiting slightly longer than I expected the plates arrived. Not just any plates but plates that looked like they had been under the heat lamp longer than expected as well. In fact the cheese had that ‘Hi, remember me from yesterday’ look to them, the beans were oozing into the ‘lettuce’ that was flumped onto the top of the plate and the rice, which had been carefully prepared sometime after Y2K sat there blandly holding the beans to their top, left side of the plate. The guacamole was strategically thwacked in the middle with the carne azada taking the right. It to had been contaminated by the rice, beans and ‘lettuce.’ You will not that I added single-quotes around ‘lettuce’ mostly because I’m assuming it was lettuce. It kind of looked like lettuce that had been under a heat lamp, and therefore wilted, or maybe some dried out cole-slaw – it tasted like warm lettuce when I tasted it.

The beans were bland, the rice was bland, the ‘lettuce’ was worse, the guacamole was great, but only in comparison to the poorness of everything else. The carne azada had been marinated for quite some time and so it’s flavor was intense. Unfortunately it tasted like it was being marinated for a beef jerky recipe. Given the condition of my plate I consider it hightly plausible that if the meat stays under the heat lamp long enough it actually dries out and turns into jerky. I can only assume that then it is shredded and placed into some other ‘shredded beef product.’ Alternately it may be sold as jerky in some stores.

In the end we just wanted to go home and cry in our beds but we couldn’t. You see one of the problems at this time was that we were at the mercy of the waiter who was busy doing something. OK, I don’t know that for sure, because it is possible he was doing nothing. No matter what he was doing he was not bringing us our bill. Finally, after bringing me my bill, which I was prepared to pay instantly he disappeared just in case I wanted to get out my calculator and double check the computer’s math. So my card sat in the plastic tray with the receipt (which proved the food was over priced) waiting for our server to collect it and then run the transaction…

Winter passed. Spring passed. I had another birthday. We had our second child, Eric Matthew. Abby got married and had my first grandchild. And then finally, after the waiter had surely committed identity theft and ordered mud flaps with the silver silhouette of a naked woman on them from Ebay, I got my card back with more paper proving I had paid to much for dinner. I signed the receipt and contemplated writing a lengthy disertation on food preparation or calling the attention of the manager. I decided not to since I had better things to do with my time than sit in that stinky restaurant for one more minute.

However, in the end we learned one important lesson: Chipotle may be all over the place but they know how to make a wicked burrito bowl! Even though it is made right in front of you, you get fresh food, not heat lamp warmed ‘schtuff.’