“Pancho Villa con sus dos viejas a la orilla!”
It was Friday afternoon and I was dying of boredom in the cubical farm. I started daydreaming about my recent trip to Mexico and how much I enjoyed sitting in the sun all day and drinking Mojitos. I started to crave Mexican food. I jumped on a local foodies site and started calling out Mexican restaurant names out loud looking for a reaction from my Mexican cube farm colleague (and occasional Spanish teacher) Jose. I come to the restaurant called Pancho Villa and he shouts out: “Pancho Villa con sus dos viejas a la orilla” which apparently roughly translates to: “Pancho Villa, with his two women beside him”. Pancho Villa as it turns out is actually a sort of Mexican hero. I decided that this is where I was going to attempt to satisfy my craving for Mexican food.
It was fairly early when we arrived at the Pancho Villa. It was still light outside but the restaurant is located in a lower level unit with minimal natural light illuminating the space so it was fairly dark inside. The low light was actually quite nice. There was two main areas, one as you enter where the bar is situated and a larger dining area in the back. We choose to eat in the front area next to the bar. The room was decorated with typical earthy sort of colors and the odd splash of bright blue and yellows if I recall.
I actually haven’t eaten very much Mexican food so I asked the waiter to recommend something that would represent the sort of classic thing you would expect from the cuisine. 
He first pointed to a Mole sauced dish and I steered away from that cause I’m not a fan of that. He then recommended a combination plate. There was three main items on the dish: a burrito, an enchilada and a taco. There was a choice of meat for each. The waiter, who I believe may have been the manager, suggested that the “classic” choice would be chicken for the burrito, cheese for the enchilada and beef for the taco. I trusted his judgment and also got a lime margarita. Lime being the “classic” flavour for that as well.
They brought us free chips and salsa to start. Nothing really blew me away here. But they were free and tasted great with the margarita. Oh I forgot to mention that of course I got the mucho margarita (3oz of tequila). My dish arrived and I was pleased to see a huge portion because I was starving. From left to right it was: refried beans, burrito, enchilada (kind of under the salad), salad, taco, Spanish rice. I’m usually a procrastinator in everything I do. I put off the things that I like least to do as long as possible. I’m sort of the opposite when I’m eating food. I always assume that I will eat everything on my plate so my technique is to eat what I like the least first and save the best for last. With this dish, my guess was that I would probably like the stuff to the right the least and the stuff to the left the best. So I started with the 
rice and tacos. I usually get frustrated with tacos. How on earth do you eat these things without them breaking in half and having all the filling fall on the plate and juices sort of drip down your arm? Well I don’t know if this was a fabulous taco but I can say that this didn’t happen to me. I think it was because the shell was thin. It seemed to break only where your teeth broke through. Also, there wasn’t much liquid to begin with so there was no risk in having it ooze down my arm. The salad was simple. The dressing seemed more acidic than a typical dressing. I think that worked well because everything was so rich, I really wouldn’t want an oily salad. I think if I was to eat this again, I would keep the salad as a sort of palate cleanser between the three rich items. The enchilada was sort of under the salad. That was too bad because all I could taste when I ate it was the sour salad dressing. The last thing I dug into was the burrito. It was packed with yummy chicken strands. Whatever the seasonings were in this burrito made the chicken look and taste like pork. It kind of tasted like it was a pulled pork burrito.
Evidence of my satisfaction…
Tags: Ottawa Mexican restaurants, Ottawa restaurant reviews, Pancho Villa
