Day 21: Fiesta Maya

Though it's not quite Taiwan (see Day 17), Evan "Eazy-E" Manning deserves some props for coming all the way from Hawaii to be a part of Goles y Frijoles. Evan, you are a good man and will someday make a fine motivational speaker. I've never heard as compelling an argument for moving to South America as yours, especially from someone who's never been.

So, it is only in consideration of the thousands of miles Evan had travelled already that I catered to his convenience this afternoon and met him at Fiesta Maya off Harris Blvd, thereby continuing a recent and unfortunate pattern of visits to restaurants of dubious authenticity and inflated cost. I am not a stranger to Fiesta Maya, having enjoyed eating there on a few occasions a few years ago when Goles y Frijoles alum, Jeffrey, lived around the corner at Davis Lake. But those memories have less to do with eating and more to do with pitchers of Dos Equis Amber (still only $7.95!) anyway.

After middling chips and salsa--only one sauce option, really?--the waiter suggested El Combo from the from the list of house combinations. At $10.25 it was about two dollars more than the rest of the combos but, considering it consists of a chalupa, chile relleno, taco, burrito, rice, and refried beans, a good way to survey quality and get out of fending for dinner later on. It took nearly all of my willpower to restrain myself from asking how El Combo could really be any better than La Superior, La Mejor ("the best"), and La Favorita. However, one potential answer is that El Combo simply isn't any better than its superlatively named counterparts, a claim consistent with the overall quality of El Combo. The taco, the only true bright spot of the three-plate meal, was about as good as crunchy tacos get. And the burrito and enchilada were not bad by any measure, just disappointingly simple, on the some plate, covered in almost-indistinguishably similar sauces, containing only beef and chicken. The real letdown of El Combo, though, were the chalupa and relleno, which also shared a plate. The chalupa was a waste of space, a formless pile of cheese, lettuce, guacamole, and refried beans on a hard corn tortilla. It's the kind of thing I'd recommend to a vegetarian without taste buds. The relleno was equally baffling. Since the verb "rellenar" literally means to "refill" and because every chile relleno I've ever eaten has been just that, a chile pepper gutted and then filled with beef and cheese, I didn't really know what to make of the cheesy pool sitting next to my chalupa. Perhaps a relleno had accidentally fallen in a food processor? We used it as dip for the chips.

To Fiesta Maya's credit, I've never had a bad experience before, and the menu is enormous, impeccably organized, and surely has got some killer entrees hiding in there somewhere. Plus, on one of the walls is a great painting of a pre-Columbian warrior whose name Eazy-E conjectured was Brian the Mayan. So, I'll always have that.

The Score: If you're looking for excitement, avoid the chalupa, relleno, burrito, and enchilada. Or rent Jurassic Park.