Disappoint?

Wednesday, I started my third class, written French without having too much trouble finding the classroom. Y'know, which is always good. I'd had a pretty awesome day beforehand, despite having woken up a little later than planned for our last trip to the new apartment before moving in. I caught the right RER B train just in time, made my connection with almost no waiting, and was able to meet Alejandro and walk to the apartment a couple minutes early. Once we'd settled business less than 10 minutes later, we made the relatively short trip up to my school's quartier and wandered around looking at leather bags and glasses before getting hungry.

But here's the best part. We ended up coming up from the metro from the wrong exit, making us walk a couple blocks to where we wanted to go, but on the way we caught site of a place that said it was a Mexican restaurant. We were a bit skeptical, but decided to check it out anyways. (I like to think that it was in this moment that the nostalgic culinary gods took pride in my faith of good Mexican food. )The place was authenticly Mexican-looking (none of that Tex-Mex feel!) though not overly done and with good taste. The music playing, while I couldn't exactly name the singer, it was definitely one of the CD's Mom listens to a lot at home. We ordered from the lunch menu, which gave us a pretty good deal: entree and main dish for 13 euros. Alejandro and I decided to each order something different so we could try a little of everything. Me: sopa de tortillas for the entree and 3 tacos (1 chorizo, 1 carne asada, 1 of carnitas) plus rice and beans. For entree, Alejandro got a tostado de tinga, and for the dish, burrito de piccadillo. When we got our plates, we were a tiny bit disappointed to see that the portions were significantly smaller than what we'd received back home, but then again--this is France. Huge portions are kind of a no-no here. But while the taste wasn't exactly like what we were used to from home, it was close. Maybe as close to it as we were gonna get. Or maybe not?

Well, we went back last night to try the dinner menu. As we'd enjoyed our lunch there fairly well, we were once again pretty excited. Unfortunately, after looking over the menu, we saw that they didn't have much else in addition to what we'd already had for lunch a couple days before. And it was expensive. Each main dish was at least 17 euros, and each entree was at least 8. After thinking of a way to get the best deal we decided to each get our own main dish and split an entree. Three quesadillas for the entree and carne asada plus a chicken taquito with mole poblano. As for myself, I ordered the dish of chicken mole poblano. The entree, while not bad, was a bit of a disappointment, mainly for the price. First, they were more empanadas than actual quesadillas, and they were small. Didn't think they were worth the 8 euros..At this point, I was beginning to get a little skeptical on how my mole poblano would taste. After all, mole is the specialty of Papa's hometown, and I've had some of the best. So when I got my plate and found that the mole tasted almost exactly as I remembered it, I was pleasantly surprised and pleased. And there were corn tortillas, which again, while not exactly the same, were close, so definitely used those to clean my plate. Alejandro however, didn't like the mole (sad for him) but then I just ended up getting his taquito. We got our bill, and cringed a bit. A total of 47 euros. I felt a little bad as ok, yeah it wasn't horrible for me, but it wasn't worth that much, especially when one of us hadn't enjoyed it. In the end, We skipped dessert there and went to the McDonald's a couple blocks away. I got a brownie ice cream thing (really good) and Alejandro ended up getting like an entire meal. All in all, I think we've decided not to go back for the time being and instead have kind of made it our mission to scope out other good Mexican and/or Cuban restaurants that aren't overpriced. But hey, at least if we get desperate again, we know this one is there.