Guest Commentary by the Fabulous Ms. Monique Daviau:
(We should always be so lucky to have an organized note-taker along for the trip.)
I am honored to be a guest commentator on Burritos on Clark. Having spent most of my life in either California or Texas, I fancy myself an educated burrito consumer. I knock back at least two or three burritos a week and if I don’t get my little burro action, I get nervous.
At first glance, Rocky’s got high marks. A generally clean and well-lit establishment, Rocky’s Tacos is a shrine to the popular Mexican sport of futbol (soccer to us gringos). A giant, colorful mural of a soccer field takes up the far wall while a glassed-in case holds Mexican futbol memorabilia. The specialty of the house is the torta, aka Mexican Sandwich, and were this blog called Tortas on Clark, my feelings on Rocky’s might be different.
While the vegetarian Cortney went to the restroom, the waitress brought out chips and salsa. Curiously, the salsa was topped with chopped ham. Who the hell puts chopped ham on salsa? In all of my years of Mexican restaurant patronage, never once have I seen ham served with salsa. That was just weird. We asked for some ham-free salsa, which was heavy on the onions and the finely chopped jalapeno. Not bad, but a little too vinegary. I opted for the squeeze bottles of hot sauce, one red, one green. I preferred the green one as the red one was also vinegary. The chips were thick and dark, as if they had visited a tanning salon before being served to us.
My burrito arrived and it looked good. Al pastor pork, beans, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and a thick cloud of sour cream peeked out from where the cook had cut it in half. The al pastor was an utter failure*. They had failed to season the meat or roast it on a vertical spit, the way every reputable taqueria in Texas does. They had just taken a bunch of ground pork and thrown it on the grill.
A few bites into the burrito, all I could taste was the grill. I could taste the grisly burned crumbs of everything else they’d cooked over the last week instead of the rather flavorless ingredients. I abandoned the meat and squirted gobs of green salsa on my burrito. It was still a disappointment.
And what was up with Cortney’s enchiladas? They looked to be a few rungs down from my home version of enchiladas, made with El Paso-brand canned sauce. They appeared to contain cheese, rice, and pico de gallo.
Rocky’s wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t any good either. I will give them bonus points for not causing me any gastrointestinal distress. Of course, afterwards we hit Red Mango in Evanston for some probiotic frozen yogurt, so maybe coating our intestines with lactobacillus bacteria stopped any unpleasant trips to the can.
The best thing about Rocky’s Tacos is not the quality of their food, but their audacious use of the English language. On the menu is an item boldly called “Fuck You Referi.” I have to wonder if the owners of this establishment didn’t know that Americans generally don’t use the word “fuck” in the names of things they want to sell, unless it’s the title of a porn video. I briefly thought about ordering a dish that represents the anger a futboller feels towards an unfair ref but it had ham and other weird meat in it.
Maybe their tortas, of which they offered sixty or so varieties, are the way to go.
*for the most amazing pastor in the Chicagoland area, please visit La Cabanita on Ogden Ave in Brookfield. Inconvenient for those not already in the west suburbs, but the abuela in the kitchen knows how to make a rich, delicious al pastor!
