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2016-03-01
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I tend to hang out at HKU. Sometimes it's because I work there, sometimes it's for the discount Starbucks. As such, I monitor offerings in the area, which are slim, and now less relevant given that the MTR has opened. I've had my eye on El Loco Gringo for a while, given that signs have been up for it since forever and a half ago. Recently, a certain well-regarded, award-winning Professor T-Spoon informed me that the place had opened, and I decided to give it a go.I didn't come un-informed. Thou
I tend to hang out at HKU. Sometimes it's because I work there, sometimes it's for the discount Starbucks. As such, I monitor offerings in the area, which are slim, and now less relevant given that the MTR has opened. I've had my eye on El Loco Gringo [sic] for a while, given that signs have been up for it since forever and a half ago. Recently, a certain well-regarded, award-winning Professor T-Spoon informed me that the place had opened, and I decided to give it a go.
I didn't come un-informed. Though there was nary an Open Rice review at the time, it had been covered by the questionable local English-language media. And it looked a little questionable. The Dim Sum Diaries tells us,
"The interiors, designed by Charlie & Rose, are inspired by a famous Mexican TV show called El Chavo del Ocho, a very silly show that we used to watch as kids in Venezuela. The show is set in a typical Mexican slum, so in the restaurant you'll see rows of laundry hanging from a line above the tables."
I’m no PC-police, but I wouldn't dress up like a hobo for Halloween. It's de-humanizing. Taking what people wear under exigent circumstances as a type of costume or fashion is really insensitive. Similarly, I wouldn’t dress up my restaurant like a slum. Sure, you can say it’s from a TV show, but I don’t see how that mitigates things.
Let's move on to the food.
The food here is terrible. Literally awful. This place is an abomination that should not exist; the people who made it should be ashamed; and I am personally offended by the level of quality. It's not a contextual thing—the bar in Hong Kong for Mexican-ish food is extremely low to the ground. El Gringo Loco [sic] manages to nigh-impossibly limbo under it, with room to spare. It's not a quality-relative-to-price thing either. If you made this food for me for free, I would consider you to have done me a harm. Proprietors, if you have a sense of shame or care about your fellow man to the slightest degree, please stop. Quit, and find some productive way to pay back your debt to society.
First on our cavalcade of horrors is the "Chips and Dips" - $60. It comes with, and I quote, "guacamole, pico de gallo, and sour cream." I quote because that is not true, at least as regards the pico. Google "pico de gallo" if you don’t know what that is. Now look at the soupy mess in the photo. Are both of these things not like the other thing? You betcha.That's not even what’s worst. According to Time Out Hong Kong, "The base [for the tortillas] is imported straight from Mexico, made only with corn flour." This is a fancy way of saying the masa harina is from Mexico, because there are literally only two ingredients in corn tortillas, and the other is water. Maybe they import the water too. Maybe they import the water mixed with the flour because they don’t know how to mix.
Anyway, I thought for sure that we would be getting fresh tortilla chips. You play up your imported ingredients, surely you don’t just purchase a bag of "Garden of Eatin" tortilla chips from the Marketplace by Jason’s and serve that. Well, if you’re El Loco Gringo [sic], you do.
The guacamole is also pre-made and store bought. I make guacamole. My friends make guacamole. There is a large qualitative difference between that and the stuff from the store. If this place makes its own, then it literally has the worst fresh guac recipe known to man. It’s not terrible for store bought, but we paid $60, hello.
Ratings:
Absolute: D-
For HK Mex: D
Relative to Price: F
OK, so those are some complaints. They may seem a little outsized, but let me paint for you the rest of the dinner, and see if you too don’t have your sunny outlook dimmed to grey skies and drizzle.
The jalapeno "poppers" arrive. I have put "poppers" in quote-marks because that's how the menu describes them. We got one for each of us of the beef ($15/ pc) and the cheese ($10/ pc). They come with a "side of blue cheese ranch sauce." I tried the cheese one first. The breading is non-standard, more like if you got a fried and stuffed chili in Korea, if you've ever had those. The cheese choice was a bad one. Normally, as poppers (or "poppers") are a Tex-Mex thing, they are filled with cheddar, which is vibrant and tangy and fantastic. This was some variety of tasteless cheese goo. The jalapenos are a little undercooked, so quite firm as these things go. They aren’t spicy.The beef "poppers" come with some densely packed ground beef. My wife stopped eating hers a third of the way through because she thought the beef was too pink. It wasn't a big loss, because they were about as bland as the cheese ones.
Choice quote from HK Magazine: "the blue cheese ranch sauce was pretty unremarkable." They can't even make blue cheese and ranch (for crying out loud!) that aren't bland, how do they expect them to save you from the bland, undercooked tempura "poppers"?
Ratings:
Absolute: F
For HK Mex: D-
Relative to Price: F
We’re not done!
We got 5 tacos. The tacos are small, but it strikes me that that's the universe having pity on me. I have no pity for you, however, so I will describe them:"Spit Roast Pork w/ pineapple and habanero chutney" $40. Someone online called these "tacos al pastor." This restaurant should call them "al pastor tacos [sic]." Tacos al pastor are perhaps the greatest of all tacos (and al pastor is great on tortas too). Shawarma-inspired Lebanese-Mexican fusion, the pork is roasted on a rotating spit and carved off when nice and crisp. I had high hopes and we ordered x2, but they were pretty bland:
Ratings:
Absolute: C+
For HK Mex: C+
Relative to Price: C-
"Slow Cooked Beef Ribs w/ pickled cabbage" $45. The beef wasn’t particularly good. Not succulent and soft from slow-cooking, and not particularly flavorful. So meh they don’t deserve a rating.
"Grilled Chicken w/ guacamole and caramelized onion" $35. Almost the highlight of the meal. Almost! My wife and I share tacos by one of us eating half and then the other eating the other half. My half of the chicken was fine. It wasn’t knock-you-out or anything, but seemed fine. Then she had her half and got some inedible gristle. It's like they're not even trying. Or trying to be terrible. Probably that.
Ratings:
Absolute: D+
For HK Mex: D
Relative to Price: C-
"Chillean [sic] Sea Bass w/ coleslaw and apricot" $55. Ah, the Patagonian toothfish! I like PT, typically. But this taco was foul. You know how the Sai Ying Pun fish market smells? This tasted like that, but like times ten. This fish had been singing with the choir invisible for at least a week. We only took a bite, and when they asked us why we didn't like it, we said it was way too fishy, in a bad way. The excuse? "It's marinated in miso." But there ain't any fish in miso! Yeah, miso soup is a little fishy, but that’s because it’s miso in fish soup! This is my new catchphrase. Next time I leave something in my fridge and it goes bad, I’m going to say, "it's marinated in miso."
Ratings:
Absolute: n/a
For HK Mex: n/a
Relative to Price: n/a
All ratings are "n/a" because this is trash. Literally. They should've thrown this fish into the garbage instead of serving it to paying customers. If I was the head chef, and I caught a sous chef serving this to customers, I would've fired that chef. If I was the manager, and I caught the head chef serving it, I would've fired the head chef. If I was the owner, and I caught the manager letting this fish be served, I would fire the manager. If I was Almighty God, who art in Heaven, and I caught the universe allowing this event to occur, game over, I would instantly nullify all of existence.
There's such a thing as a hit piece. You go out, you’re looking to take someone down, and you write any old thing—maliciously and hyperbolically. People accuse me of this every now and again and I don't deny a fair measure of hyperbole, BUT I own no restaurants and make no money off of food reviewing, receive no free food, and have never reviewed a restaurant run by someone I know, or for any compensation whatsoever. I don't have an ulterior motive. If you must know the truth, I visited El Loco Gringo [sic] on my birthday.* I don’t hate because I wanted to hate on them. I can hate any day of the year, I was here to celebrate. I was here because I thought, from reading the reviews at the Dim Sum Diaries, HK Magazine, and Time Out Hong Kong, that I'd have a pretty decent Mexican food experience. And that’s what I wanted. For my birthday.
* Actually two days later, my b-day unfortunately fell on Chinese New Year. But this was my b-day dinner. It was my special night out.
TL; DR: ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE.
Other Info. :
I can imagine this being the best concept restaurant in Hong Kong. Just hire Quico, and whenever someone orders a taco, they get the exact thing that I got, but Quico sits down with a much better taco his mom made. Then Don Ramon shows up and pinches Quico until he cries. Then roll laugh track.
(The above review is the personal opinion of a user which does not represent OpenRice's point of view.)
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