10773 Hole Avenue, Riverside, CA 92505-2862
Who Forgot the Spices?
My wife and I had high hopes for this restaurant, but were disappointed in the end. The food here is what I term, "Mild Mex," meaning, bland and destined for the palates of the uninitiated. I have eaten great Southwestern and Mexican cuisine in California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and Mexico. This food would be scorned in all of these communities.
My wife ordered cheese enchiladas and I chicken. We spent about $30 for our food and water. To be fair, I will only describe what I ate. My enchiladas were filled with simple grilled chicken. The tortillas were covered in a tasteless chili sauce. In a good Southwestern restaurant, the chicken would have been marinated in a spicy sauce with onions and various seasonings. Here the chicken was just chopped and added naked to the tortilla. Tasteless! By the way, in the Mild Mex tradition, the salsa that accompanied the chips was about 90 percent tomato. The salsa was one step hotter than tomato sauce. It had the consistency of spaghetti sauce. Yuck!
Discriminating palates from Santa Fe, Tucson or Austin would ask for their money back and would never come back to this place in Riverside. I figure this joint gets most of its business from the rotund county bureaucrats that barely serve the public next door. Only they would appreciate such bland offerings and consider this junk a respite from their ham and white bread sandwiches.
They probably also stop here for the drinks. Only then would the food be palatable. Eventually the government employees who frequent this attempt at a restaurant have to slosh back to their cubicle and push more paper. Gratefully, they know that sooner than later they'll be waddling to the restroom where they can do their best work. Thankfully, the food at Anchos doesn't stick around for long.
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