Cue the temporarily non-ironic ’80s nostalgia kick — now on steroids! — where people actually pretend they were “moved” by songs like “Bad” and “Thriller” as children in 3…2…1. Let’s not forget that the guy molested children for fuck’s sake. Move on already…
Saturday night after her performance, Nicci and I met at this new mexican bar on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. It’s owned by the same person who owns Delancy and Bowery. It’s called Mission Cantina. For the most part, it’s a tequila bar with scant seating, but their menu was enticing enough to draw our attention. Plus, Nicci said the place was less than a year old, so we’d be relatively “new” clients. Sounds good enough for me!
The tequila list is really extensive, but I’m not a woman or a fan of Alexander Pope’s, so I don’t drink that swill. I had a Mexican IPA that was decent if not better than the other watery options on the menu. Nicci had a gin and tonic. I was hoping she’d tried their margarita because I sure as hell wasn’t going to order it on my own, but oh well, there’s always next time.
The menu features some great options. Nicci ordered shrimp over white rice, which was fervently supported by our waitress. The shrimp are slathered in a generous and spicy combination of chipotle, tequila, tomato, lime, garlic and cilantro. I had a couple pieces and some of the rice, and it went quite well together. We both would have thought that the shrimp would have been served over mexican rice, but the white rice complimented both the seafood and the sauce. They also offer a simple quesadilla dish, burritos, a nacho plate with optional meat, a light salad, and a mole poblano with free range chicken, jasmine rice and jalapeno cornbread that also sounded delicious.
The main food item is the taco, which comes two-to-an-order with a side of mexican rice and beans. I ordered one of the beef barbacoa (slow cooked) and one of the smoked pork (hickory slow smoked). The best part of the dish is that you can pick any choice of salsa and garnish. They offer roja, verde and habanero salsas, so I picked the roja and the habanero. The garnishes include pico de gallo, chopped onions with cilantro, pickled jalapenos, finely sliced onions with vinegar, queso fresco and sour cream. I asked for everything except sour cream. They came served on a flight in small cups. It was very cool that all the garnishes and salsas came on the side so that I could stuff the tortilla with whatever I wanted in whatever proportions I desired. The meat was cooked perfectly. The pickled jalapenos were also good, and the habanero salsa — even though the server warned us it was very spicy — was a perfect blend of flavor and heat. The beer helped.
The place was empty at 11:00pm on a Saturday night, but I imagine during hot summer months it’d be a great place to sit outside and enjoy some well-prepared Mexican food over several beers with friends. Also, I have nothing else to write about today so the idea of reviewing an eatery I ate at last week a day after writing a post entirely dedicated to pizza seemed like a good idea. I guess it’s Food Week at Swan Fungus.
*Side note*: Last evening this website received its 1,000,000th page view. That’s right, one million pages on this website have now been accessed by people across the world. The next big milestone will be the 1,000,000th unique visitor, but who the hell knows when that’ll happen. Even if it says 712 people per day view this website, I’m convinced it’s the same 7 people returning here over and over again because they have nothing better to do during their work day. Soon, though, we’ll have a big “Million Douchebag March” party to celebrate the blog’s millionth visitor.
