When John and I travel back and forth between NorCal and Utah we like to stop at family owned places for lunch. There are certainly lots of chain restaurants and fast food available but you get lots of interesting lunches at these small places.

We chose a Mexican place in a town in the Mojave Desert for lunch. It is a small restaurant in a strip mall that has gotten very good reviews on TripAdvisor and Yelp!. Unfortunately for us and them they were having a bad day.

Here is a picture of the food-

Carnitas with rice and beans and a small salad

First we got a very small bowl of chips that was about half full. This was accompanied by a salsa which was either straight out of a hot sauce bottle or puréed to liquid. It was so unappealing that at the end of lunch our tiny half bowl of chips was only half emptied. Then our lunch came. The carnitas was so overcooked that it was dried out into shards of pork. The accompanying salad had no dressing. The gloppy looking refried beans and the rice were okay but were served at a temperature that was barely room temperature. There were also some corn tortillas which were good.

What did the hundreds of people who reviewed this restaurant eat?! If they ordered what I had than I can no longer trust my fellow diners. The best I can hope for is that this place was having a very bad day. Either way we won’t be back.