El Alamo Grande

I gave this place three chances. The first made us sick. The second made us and an entire construction crew sick. The third, (God was watching out for me) the staff refused to serve us because they were going to close in an hour and it was empty.

I live just a few blocks from this restaurant so I had to give it a try.  It's much bigger than it looks from the outside and as the other reviewers have mentioned, it's pretty divey, but that's fine.  I don't go for the view, I go for the food.  

I went at 11:30 and the place was pretty dead - just 2 other tables were seated.  Service was very, very slow - it took the server 15 minutes just to come over and say hi and order drinks, then another 10 minutes to drop off chips and take my order.  The chips weren't fresh but weren't stale either, didn't seem homemade.  The salsa was fine too, pretty standard fare.  I ordered the tamale plate.

The tamales themselves were kind of bland and the ratio of corn meal to meat wasn't good - too much cornmeal, and mushy like it'd been soaked too long.  The green chili that they were smothered in, however, was pretty good: that electric orange stuff you can't find anywhere but Chubby's anymore that awesome in the way that corned beef in a can is awesome.  The spanish rice, which is normally a throw away item for me, was the standout item on the dish!  Very flavorful and perfectly cooked.

Long story short, I wasn't terribly impressed with my first taste of El Alamo Grande, but there were enough good things going for it - plus all the rave reviews on Yelp - that I will assume my first experience was not typical.  I'll give it another try - maybe some Peruvian fare next time?

We ordered in from this place last night and it was hands down the BEST Mexican food we've ever had! I had the shredded beef smothered burrito and my husband had the Carne Asada. And it was an awesome surprise that they delivered. We will order from them again, so glad we found this little gem :).