Mexican Banditry

The sister, CL, and myself met at Holland Village for lunch, and given the usual ding dong backwards and forwards discussion of where to eat, I plumped for Mexican. Holland Village itself has two Mexican restaurants sitting plumb right beside one another. Family tradition has dictated that we always dine at El Patio, which has a slightly more homely feel compared to Cha Cha Cha which was reputed to serve food that was less than authentic.

That age old tradition was to be broken today. We arrived at El Patio and stood outside briefly perusing the menu. The restaurant was completely empty, rather dire for a Sunday afternoon. We could blatantly see the one staff member on duty inside the restaurant, sitting at one of the tables, doing her damnedest to blithely ignore us. Even when we stood there for five minutes and began staring straight are her. I finally made irritated waving motions and she slowly and very reluctantly began to rise from her slouch, by which time me and the sister were so irritated, we walked away.

It was thus that we came to dine at Cha Cha Cha. The service was admittedly much more prompt. We were soon shown to a table. That, if anything, could explain why they had 6 or 7 tables occupied to El Patio's none. All was going rather well. Until the food came. I had ordered the mixed combo - one hard taco with beef, one chicken burrito. By the time I was half way through the hard taco, I was confronted with stringy bits of meat at the bottom, which was so tasteless, I couldn't remember whether I had ordered the beef or the chicken with the taco, and quite honestly, on taste alone I couldn't tell. I guessed it was beef based on the coloration, and nothing else. My sister was similar unenthused about her meal - her rice wasn't quite to her liking, and the refried beans tasted like they had probably been refried one too many times. The result was poor CL being subjected to a litany of complaints about the food from the two of us.

So, the puzzling question for us remained: how did these two establishments survive for longer than a decade at Holland Village, given the poor food in one, and the poor service in the latter (though the poor service at El Patio was probably due to a change in management). More importantly, where can Caleb and the sister go if they want some good mexican food? There is of course the Cafe Iguana, near Clarke Quay and with a newly opened outlet on Greenwood, which is decent. But we're looking for really authentic Mexican, stuff which can vaguely measure up to what we had when we spent a few months in Texas. Can anyone help us with our conondum, please do send recommendations. We need to eat proper Mexican after the debacle that was Cha Cha Cha.