Santa Fe Grill

The only fair analogy I can come up with to describe Sante Fe Grill is that of a 12 year old girl who thinks she wants to be grunge one day but girlie the next day while still maintaining her super cool uniqueness, and then I realized that I totally date myself by even mentioning grunge and divulge too much about 12 year-old me, but the point is still applicable: Sante Fe Grill wants to be the trendy place; but it also wants to be the place with homey, comforting food; but it also wants to be the place that has a drive through. Now, places like this can work, but I don't feel like Sante Fe has smoothed out all the kinks to make it stick out as unique. Instead, it reads: "trying too hard."

Sante Fe attracts a wide variety of people at lunch, which may be due to their "we're trying to appeal to everyone" vibe. So, bravo I guess on getting people to come in. I had some guacamole and the pecos tacos for lunch. The chips and salsa were fine; I actually winced when taking my first bite and thought to myself, "Please don't be canned tomatoes like Maria's," and thank goodness they weren't. I actually found the salsa to be pretty tasty, although I wish it would have finished with some heat.

As for the guacamole, "make your own" guacamole is not new or unique, although it may be here. As such, I was not impressed by it, but more so, I was underwhelmed by the ingredients offered on it. You mean I can pick from ingredients that typically go in guacamole. C-R-A-Z-Y!!! I mean no fruit to add in or peppers or even any special seasonings like smoked sea salt. I wouldn't dare expect something as crazy as seafood to mix in, but some additional seasonings beyond the usual would have been preferred. Then there was the execution of the guacamole: overall, it was good, but I happened upon a chunk of jalapeno that was larger than a quarter. I didn't realize it was the jalapeno until I had bitten into it, and that was just too much jalapeno for me. If you're going to make something like guacamole to each table's liking, at least you should be sure to chop the ingredients consistently. That's just poor execution. Overall, the guacamole was fine but nothing special. Still needed more lime and needed more salt. But hey, at least they didn't prepare it table side.

Now, my lunch: the pecos tacos. These sounded good: lemon snapper tacos with a pineapple and hominy salso and a cilantro cream sauce. Sold. I ordered 2 b/c based on the price, I assumed they would be the size most tacos are at any slightly swanker mexican style cuisine place. Instead, the tortillas were massive, engulfing the ingredients within my shell and making it difficult to enjoy the taco as a composite item. I had to push all the ingredients in the taco to one end of the tortilla and fold the edge the shell like a burrito to enjoy the taco.

Furthermore, the snapper was breaded. I wish the menu would have indicated that it was going to be breaded, fried fish. I should have asked, but I normally expect something like snapper to not be breaded b/c it's so good on its own. Ultimately, I wouldn't order a taco from there again (at least not any beyond a simple ground beef one) because the shell is simply too big for the ingredients inside. It's just awkward.

Also, the rice was overpowered with chipotle hot sauce. Chipotle is a really strong smokey flavor, and I don't want that much of it. There was no indication on the menu that the rice would be smothered in chipotle; in fact, the menu item indicated pico de gallo rice. Meh.

I know this review sounds incredibly negative, but hey, the place simply isn't that great based on my lunch. I was hoping for trendier food based on the menu, the ambiance, and the description of the food; and that's not what I got. That being said, I would try this place again--although not anytime soon--with the understanding that it's run-of-the-mill tex mex food trying to masquerade as trendy mexican.

Meh?  This place is good, but I'm not sure who I'd recommend it to.  A reviewer below says the place was too bright at dinner - I went at lunchtime and thought the place was much too dark for what it is.  That was my first impression, quickly followed by a disappointed realization that the place attempts to be trendy-ish and thinks itself a full notch more clever than it actually is.

They serve chips and salsa on the house, and the salsa is sweet/non-spicy without being a fruit salsa, and fairly good.  They have customizible guac, and you fill out the order sheet with a crayon (look, whimsy! and you color on the table!).  It wasn't bad guacemole, but it came off as a trite gimmick and the charm of ordering a custom-made, late-arriving accompaniment to the free appetizer is lost on me.

I had the "Ansel Adams," which is a blackened chicken quesadilla with goat cheese.  The first bite was delicious.  By the 3rd triangle, I didn't like it much anymore.  It was one of those foods that gets old quickly, and something was overdone.  Normally, that doesn't happen to me with quesadillas.  It came with something called "Margarita fries," which were basically "fries with sugary crap on top."  I don't know why a tex-mex place is serving fries with a quesadilla, but I do know I prefer good generic fries to mediocre margarita fries, and a good authentic-ish chicken and cheese quesadilla to that.

Don't get me wrong, the food is good, and the service was good, but this place seems like it's having identity issues.  Is this a faux-trendy place to take gullible Missouri State coeds on dates?  Or is this good home-style Tex-Mex cooking?  You really can't serve both masters in this circumstance.  

"Cilanrto-infused sour cream" and "green chile and lime reduction" do not seem to go with free chips/salsa and crappy fries and a drive-up window and a cheapo drink list.  Why Bloody Mary carne asada?  Why not just great carne asada?  Why divide your entrees between "innovations" and "traditions," especially when one of your "traditions" shoves a bacon bleu cheeseburger in a tortilla?  Why are you shoving "authentic" paella in a chile rellano?  What did the paella ever do to you?  Why is there bleu cheese in your enchilladas?  Why is there bacon and New York strip and risotto and pine nuts thrown in various dishes?  Why are "mexi-tinis" and "sangaritas" on the same drink menu as $75 bottles of Cab?  Why does your menu alternate between Courier New and Papyrus in four different colors?

You know what would have made me love this place?  If either a) it was an unpretentious, no-frills celebration of tex-mex food (which is as blue collar of a food as we have) or b) it was an inspired, innovative culinary experience that fused tex-mex with other American cuisines.

Instead, we seemingly get mediocre gimmicky innovations thrown into a menu with enough classic Mexican dishes to appeal to Joe Commoner.  The result is good, but inevitably disappointing.  The part of me that wanted a straight-up quesadilla wonders why they messed with a winning formula.  The part of me open to tepid adventures feels underwhelmed.

It was good, I'll probably go back some day, but I don't get it.  I've seen upscale casual work before, and this misses the tone in both directions and I can't take it seriously in either respect.  The real Ansel Adams was about letting nature speak for itself through simple, high-contrast black and white photography.  This place seems more like Ansel Adams had a baby with Anne Leibovitz and they hope the result appeals to everyone with enough credit card balance to pay the tab.

Anyone who likes this place and thinks it's good "Tex Mex" is a born and raised Springfieldian who hasn't traveled much.  Or, maybe you were extremely starved and desperate. Either way, if you ate at Escalante's in Houston, you would retract your five star review in .05 seconds. The beef fajitas were so doused in chipotle I was nauseated. Everything else was pretty bland and medicore at best. I will not be back.