Chevy's

Not much to report this week. We went to Chevy's on Monday. Chevy's is to Mexican what P.F. Chang's is to Chinese and Olive Garden is to Italian. Decent, mass-produced food that is most certainly edible and in a pleasant setting with good service. Authentic? Hell no. We don't go to Chevy's for authenticity, we go for the sweet corn tomalito, which I discovered was of Tex-Mex origins. Corn pudding, people. Masa harina, corn kernels, and sugar.

You really can't go wrong with that.

I like their flautas, which are very nicely fried with great sauces, but my meal Monday night was the 2-item combo crab/shrimp enchiladas and a fried shrimp taco. I had to order the 3-item to get the flauta. Nuts. Their enchiladas aren't the best, as the tortilla is often kind of chewy and, with the cheese, it can be a bit of a chewy blob. The crab/shrimp one wasn't so bad, texture-wise, but there was absolutely no seafood flavor in it. Very tiny amounts of frozen and flavorless crab mixed with bay shrimp. The sauce was cream-based and was quite overpowering. The website says it was supposed to be habanero-pesto. I guess so. It tasted neither like peppers or basil.

I'm crabbing a bit (pun intended), of course, and I did like my meal just fine. The taco was better, with crisp lettuce, a good chipotle aioli (which tasted like peppers and mayo, as it should) and two fried shrimp. They said "jumbo", but they were medium-sized shrimp. Note to Chevy's: bay shrimp are small, tiger shrimp are medium, and jumbo prawns are truly "jumbo". The taco's tortilla was pretty good... light and fluffy. Fresh out of "El Machino," the most. awful. name. ever. for a machine, but it is fun to watch it crank out tortillas. It's not that hard to pronounce "La Maquina," but I'll leave the quibbling over bad Spanglish for another time.

The tomalito is always the highlight of the dish and they kindly replace my beans with three scoops of it. I also really like their chips and salsa. The chips are super-thin and crisp (flour-based, I think) and the salsa is rich with herbs. Oregano's dominant, giving it a dense, smoky flavor. It mellows out the acidity and the heat of the tomatoes and chiles.

This weekend will be in San Francisco. There will be some good eats!