Los Cucos

We went to this Los Cucos location for dinner with friends the other night. We started off with esquites, a Mexican street corn appetizer. We had the chicken quesadillas, the chicken fajitas a la poblana, and carnitas as mains. Finished it off with the Tres Amigos dessert.

The esquites dish was great. Corn off the cob with sour cream and mexican cheese, seasoned with tajin. Really good with the lime juice on top. It's very well conceived and I'd be happy to get that again.

The chicken quesadillas were quite tasty. The poblana sauce for the chicken fajitas was excellent, with a rich mushroom flavor. Unfortunately the chicken fajitas themselves ended up overdone and dry. But the sauce helped. The carnitas were a mixed experience. The fatty parts were tender, juicy and flavorful. The leaner loin pieces were pretty dry. Overall the flavor was good. The dishes came with rice and charro beans--they were fine but not memorable.

The Tres Amigos dessert is filled churros with caramel sauce and powdered sugar, a tres leches cake, and vanilla ice cream with pecans. It made a great dessert for sharing, you got a lot of different tastes. The churros were excellent, obviously fresh made. The filling had not made the churros go soft. The cake was deliciously sweet and moist, as tres leches cake should be. The ice cream was nice and creamy. Great way to finish.

Our waiter was good at his job, with a low-key humorousness about him. The service had a couple rough spots--we didn't get the poblano sauce or the sides for the carnitas on the first pass. Service pace was relaxed, nice for an evening with friends. The restaurant is in the Panther Creek Shopping Center, a venerable strip mall, and it's pretty crowded inside. We had a lot of plates at the table, and the carnitas were presented on a tall grill with a can of sterno underneath that put them right under my nose. I'm not a fan of sterno heat, it tends to overcook the food, and I think that happened this time too. None of this really took away from enjoying the evening. They have Youtube karaoke on Tuesday nights, and it attracts some good singers. Overall it's easy to see why the restaurant is one of the institutions at this shopping center.

My Yelp Review