Mango’s Latin Grill, Lawrenceville GA

There is a triangle of roads, bordered on one side by Ronald Reagan Boulevard, on another by the end of Pleasant Hill Road, and on the third by Highway 29, and in this triangle is an amazing array of ethic foods, from Argentinian to Dominican to (at one time) Polish to Venezuelan. Places there, such as Mango’s Latin Grill, are hardly discussed and explored, but it never stops leaving me with a major curiousity streak. I know I’ll not win any awards for being hip or trendy by hanging out here. Like every other foodie who has been hooked through the nose by the powers that be, I should only review restaurants on Howell Mill Road, correct?

Mango’s Latin Grill, a Venezuelan joint, lives in the corner of the ‘L’ shaped Five Oaks Shopping Center, and the one other time I tried to eat there, it was closing as I arrived. It’s small, no bigger than a typical taqueria or mom n’ pop Jamaican eatery. And the ambience of the place is that of a mom n’ pop eatery, as if mothers, fathers, sons, cousins and uncles are all getting together to serve food to guests. The inside is small, simple, pretty, with deft use of colors, and the kinds of food they serve shown in large photos along the walls of the eatery.

I had a Jaimito sandwich that day. I’ve had arepas before, and I was trying to avoid starch. The sandwich was decent. Not very good, or wow, but decent.  I brought a pair of Mango’s empanadas home to my wife, who enjoyed them a great deal. In my opinion, it’s a place to try a new cuisine, if you’re in the area.

Verdict: Promising, if you’re in an experimental mood, or like this cuisine.

Mango’s Latin Cuisine
3870 Lawrenceville Highway
Lawrenceville, GA 30044
(770) 381-8831

 

Holy Taco, Atlanta GA

It was a comment by a chef at Fox Brothers that led us to Holy Taco. He said he enjoyed eating at Holy Taco with his wife, that he liked the kind of food they made. That was enough of a hint to track this place down and take an online peek. What I saw was quite appealing. The menu is broad and interesting. There were clear signs  of Central American, Cuban, and Spanish influence in the offerings.  There was a solid review by Bob Townsend of the AJC. The tacos were cheap and they had a lot more than just tacos. A myriad of sauces, sandwiches, and entrees made trying the place a priority.

Holy Taco is on Glenwood Avenue, a couple minutes from exit 61B on I-20, and has chest high rectangular lights outside that make it easy to spot. Otherwise it’s a low lying building built of cinder blocks and painted a dark green outside. There is parking behind the restaurant. There is a ton of outdoor seating and plenty of indoor seating as well. Inside, the walls are a light green, the tables and chairs are of burnished metal, and the lighting .. plenty of it and dropping from the ceiling .. looks as if the shades were constructed from 3 quart metal mixing bowls. The metalwork on the walls, Christian crosses and all, there is no way I’m doing it justice with mere words. A blogger with a camera phone really needs to stalk this place.

We ordered a lot of food by the time we were done. We ordered chicken, chicken heart, beef tongue and fish tacos. We ordered the stock salsa (Equadorian), their habanero salsa and their salsa verde. I ordered a quinoa salad. My wife ordered plantains and my daughter ordered their paella. We also ordered a side of their saffron rice.

The chips, when they arrived, were obviously bread (perhaps a pita bread) fried on site, brown and crisp. They tended to be a little greasy. In that respect they remind me of the old Lady Bird Johnson recipe for “noche specials”:

In the 60's, if you wanted chips, you had to make them.

If you want dry chips, this isn’t your place, to be sure. The salsas were good. The Equadorian is a decent staple salsa. The salsa verde is very mild, with actually a sour flavor and no heat that I can detect. Their habanero sauce was good and hot but not exceptionally fiery. I saw my wife pour about a third of the steel cup we received of the habanero sauce onto one taco. The habanero was the salsa we liked the best.

The tacos were smallish, maybe 3-4 bites of food each. You could get them in corn or flour tortillas. The chicken was good, with plenty of marinated meat and full of flavor. My wife finished hers entirely. I liked my fish taco, though my memory of it by now is a little vague. The chicken heart taco turned out to have more crust than I would have liked, but still earthy and good. The star of the evening was the lengua (beef tongue) taco. The meat was so soft, creamy, and tasty, mixed with a bit of cilantro, that it blew away every other taco I tried. To me, the lengua taco was a home run.

The quinoa salad was excellent. It had a red quinoa as the base, with slivers of cooked garlic, green bits of herb, and slivers of white vegetable on an oval plate. My wife loved the taste of it, and she’s been hesitant about quinoa in the past. The dressing .. I could taste lime juice and perhaps another sour component (vinegar?), and some oil.  When I asked our waiter to ask the chef what was in the dressing, we were later told “garlic, olive oil and parsley”.

The plantains were flattened into something the size and shape of silver dollar pancakes and fried. They were crunchy and good to my taste, but my wife didn’t care for them. I don’t think they looked the way she wanted them to. The saffron rice was cooked with too much water and ended up a little gummy. It also was a little salty.

My daughter gave a thumbs up to her paella. We avoided the rice, but the shrimp (grilled tasting and excellent), the mussels (really good), and the chicken (also full of flavor) were worth it.  We took some of the paella home.

Service was quite good. My daughter declared that our waiter was “cute”, and the waitstaff in general were informally dressed, attractive, and attentive.

Verdict: Not for someone who needs everything on the menu to be perfect. Holy Taco, however, is full of original food that is pleasing to the eye and tongue, and very highly recommended for the adventurous.

Holy Taco
1314 Glenwood Avenue
Atlanta, GA 30316

To get to Holy Taco from Snellville, take 78 South to 285, 285 South to I-20 West, I-20 West to exit 61B (turn left onto Glenwood). In about 3 minutes, Holy Taco will appear on your right.

 

Cositas Ricas: Columbian food near Snellville

My first encounter with any kind of Columbian food in the Atlanta area came as Patacon Pisa’o was built on the ashes of an abandoned Del Taco on Jimmy Carter in Norcross, east of I-85. I stopped one day while heading home and found they sold fried plantains, which my wife loves. After a while we found other dishes, such as the empanadas they served, or arepas, small corn tortillas, thicker than the Mexican kind, on which they heap different meats. It was a welcome change when we wanted something inexpensive and a little exotic.

A word of warning: though I’ve eaten at Columbian restaurants, I hardly know the cuisine. A lot of what I’ve learned has come at considerable trial and error. For those who want to know more, Maureen McCarty has done an excellent review of La Casona, a restaurant near Buford Highway, and she describes many of their dishes in detail. Eat Buford Highway (an Atlanta blog, highly recommended) has a fine review of Casa Vieja, off Shallowford Road.

First Impression of Cositas Ricas

Cositas Ricas is in a strip mall on the north side of Pleasant Hill Road, about half a block before the Racetrack gas station and a block or so before Lowes, as you’re traveling east from the I-85-Pleasant Hill intersection. It’s small, with just a few tables inside, a ‘L’ shaped counter, a cooler for drinks, a rack on the counter that has empanadas, and a flat screen TV tuned to a Columbian television station. There was a young man in the store, minding it, with his mother working in the back.

I was hardly the only customer in the place. There was a man waiting for takeout when I entered. There was a couple that came in as I sat, and finally, there was a young lady, mostly on the phone, who ordered the bandeja paisa, and then was trying to get a slightly different kind of banana with her food.

I was offered a menu and it took a minute to note that the dishes were listed in Spanish in black, and in English in red.  Since I had no clue what the restaurant offered, I was groping, but I picked up on the arepas and asked for two of them, one a ham arepas and the other chicken (arepas con pollo). I had a smoothie style drink (jugos con leche) using a blackberry base as well. The smoothie was excellent, and of the arepas, the ham one was ok, and the chicken one was pretty good. The chicken arepas was spicier, offered more meat, and had more flavor.

I asked for a take out menu, but was offered a card instead:

Cositas Ricas uses a card to advertise their offerings

As this is a first impression, I’ll offer no verdict on the place. It’s just opening. But for those who are adventurous, drop by on a Saturday or Sunday. That’s when you’ll get the richest menu and the most offerings here.

Cositas Ricas
960 Pleasant Hill Road, Suite E
Lawrenceville GA, 30044
770-806-0120