Church Street Cafe

Recently a friend of mine came home from grad school and was having a really bad case green chile with drawl. I thought that I would take her to a restaurant that neither of us had been to, so I chose to try the Church Street Cafe. Elaine was a good sport and did not protest this idea. In retrospect, she should have objected or I should have not made the suggestion.

This restaurant is located off of Romero Street in an alley called Church Street, hence Church Street Cafe. It was a little hard to find. The size of the restaurant is much larger than the front appears. It's not a wide restaurant, but is a long house that was converted to an eating establishment. There is a small patio with a few tables in the front. The entrance has a hostess stand and various merchandise, I then got the feeling that I had fallen into a tourist trap. I should have listened to my gut feeling. We then were seated on the lovely patio in the back with a really nice water fall. The downside of the great atmosphere was the horrible fly problem. I would have thought that they would have put up some counter measures, they may have, but they were ineffective.

I originally wanted to sit at a different table due to the location, but the hostess said that the server in that section was overloaded and service would be slow. So we were seated at the table that I would have been my second choice. The service was terrible. The server did not come and acknowledge that we had been seated for quite awhile. She then took our orders for drinks; this establishment does not have a full liquor license.

We ordered guacamole with our chips to start the meal. The guacamole portion was very generous. I am not a guac connoisseur so I am not sure what good guac taste like. I guess it was OK. Elaine said it was OK. She recently came back from Guatemala and she said that she had consumed copious amount of guacamole. I then ordered a cup of menudo with red chile to have before my meal, but was served with my main course. Elaine ordered the tamale plate and I ordered the combo fajitas. I asked to get the menudo with tortillas and got it with sopaipillas. I then asked for tortillas and the server just brought another serving of sopaipillas. The menudo was served with red chile that had the consistency of gravy. The fajitas were OK. The chicken was a little dry and the beef was an unusual cut of beef for fajitas. The unusual cut of beef resulted in a dry, hard chunk of beef. Elaine’s pork tamale was dry and the pork was not very flavorful.

The restaurant has great atmosphere, historical significance, and well decorated, but fell very short of a good restaurant. The service was horrible and the food was marginal at best. This is a tourist trap. I would give the Church Street Café two out of five stars.

http://www.churchstreetcafe.com/