Berryhill Baja Grill in Houston

First, I have to share this little blog post about fresh wasabi. It is the best thing in the world, and I got nerdily excited just looking at that lovely field of wasabi plants.

Ok, dinner:


Tonight for dinner, I had a pork tamale and fish taco combination plate from Berryhill Baja Grill. Berryhill is a large Texas chain that has one outpost in Cancun. It wasn't bad, per se, I was just not impressed. To be fair, I didn't expect to like it. I like sketchy taqueria Mexican food, particularly Jalisco-style, and American-style chains rarely fit the bill. On the good side, I was able to try a decent cross-section of the menu because they're very flexible about letting you make your own combination plates. Prices weren't too bad, and they have margaritas and Mexican beer available.

My taco was just weird. They get points for using corn tortillas rather than flour, and for providing two to keep the juices from soaking through and disintegrating the tortilla. But, well, there was mayonnaise on it. I only recently got over my aversion to mayo, and it definitely doesn't belong on a tortilla. There was also romaine lettuce on it, which I promptly yanked off. Cabbage=good. Shredded iceberg=ok. Large sheaves of romaine, no. It also contained tomatoes, which were fine. The fish had a peculiar pinkish tone, but otherwise looked like it wanted to be tilapia. The menu doesn't mention what sort of fish it was. Mystery fish, yum. At least it wasn't overcooked.

The tamales were much more innocuous: shredded pork in slightly sweet masa. The pork was a little dry, but otherwise not bad. It came with an adobo-like sauce that I wanted to like, but for the strange, musty aftertaste. Too much tamarind and lime juice, I think. It reminded me a bit of A-1 steak sauce, which is also tamarind-heavy.

The beans were not bad, just not really worth talking about. I got black ones, with a little sour cream squiggle.

On a positive note, they have free chips, salsa, limes, and escabeche. The escabeche (marinated carrots and jalapeño...I had to look it up, too) was much milder than at a taqueria, and very tasty. The chips were sad, but that probably had something to do with our off-peak dining hour. I didn't have any salsa, but it looked good.

It's not normal, indeed.

Tonight, I had a taco plate from Freebirds Burrito, with chips, salsa, and a diet Dr. Pepper.

Freebirds (it's driving me crazy not to put an apostrophe in there somewhere)is a small chain of burrito joints that I always thought was from Texas, but was apparently started in California. They're very popular in Texas, particularly with the college student market. I'm picky about burritos, and mostly ambivalent about Freebirds, which to me tastes identical to Chipotle (ie, badly seasoned, salty beans and textureless meat). My favorite burritos in the world come from Big City Burrito in Colorado, also a small burrito chain that also is popular with college students. They have a much cooler logo:



But I digress. I wasn't in the mood for a mediocre burrito, so I decided to try the items on their menu that differentiate them a bit from Chipotle- in this case, tacos. The burrito girl flirted with me shamelessly while making my burrito, which caused her to repeatedly screw it up. Nice compliment, I guess. I'd love to know why it's always girls in the food service industry who think I'm a lesbian. Anyway, I ended up with carnitas, pico de gallo, onion, cilantro, and cheese in corn tortillas. One also contained iceberg lettuce, because I didn't catch burrito girl's last mistake in time.

I'm still unimpressed with Freebirds. I'd forgotten how much I dislike their beans, so their presence sort of ruined the whole taco. I couldn't taste the carnitas at all through the beans' salty, smoky haze. Their chips were decent, and the accompanying salsa was actually very good, if acidic. The salsa's tomatoes had a pureed but still chunky consistency, with onion and lime flavor and some heat.