568 Beaufort St
Mount Lawley Western Australia 6050
(08) 2289 627
Hours:
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Recently open, Salsa's Mt Lawley is another addition to the Fast Food Mexican Wave spreading around Perth. Salsa's is a fast food franchise owned by the same company as owns Boost Juice, and they have an emphasis on fresh fast Mexican food. Salsa's offers a selection of Tacos, Burritos, Quesadillas, nachos, snacks and Mexican bowls.
The best thing I have tried there is their street tacos (carnitas, chicken chipotle, and Habanero steak) with soft flour tortillas, and they are way better, bigger, tastier and fresher than those prepared in other similar places in Perth. To my surprise, they were beyond average, truly tasty and delicious.
Other things like the supposed fajitas (which are burritos) or the fries are completely forgettable, tasteless, and not worth the money. Burritos are better at Zambreros, really.
Portions are decent, and prices are terrific.
The have a selection of soft drinks, including Mexican "Jarritas" (sugary soft drinks). No alcoholic drinks yet. BYO.
The place is functional and spacious, pleasant and well ventilated.
The staff are really friendly and welcoming. I have visited several times, and they have been consistently nice.
They are still waiting for the alcohol license and for the Town of Vincent permit to enlarge their seating area, which is small.
MIND
They have Tuesday Tacos (soft or hard) at 1.95 bucks. However, they are smaller and less well prepared than the ones I tried the first day I visited.
511 Beaufort St
Highgate Western Australia 6003
0418 187 708
Website
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Hours
Wed - Fri: 17:00 - 00:00
Sat:12:00 - 00:00
Sun: 12:00 - 22:00
I had passed many times by El Público without realising that this was a restaurant, as the store-front is very sleek and the signs are flat banners on the wall and windows. The place is quite small, but very comfortable and luminous during the day, and has a nice background music. The cocktail bar is right at the entrance, but nicely separated from the eating area and very trendy.
El Público offers
simple tasty street-food and home-style Mexican cooking, a small selection of
traditional sweets, a great selection of soft drinks, Mexican alcoholic
drinks (beer, mezcal and tequila) and cocktails. I love their rustic tin crockery and serving pots. Very cute - they convey well the sort of food they prepare.
THE FOOD - I have tried some of their antojitos (snacks) primeros (entrees), and postres (desserts) and most of them were good. The Esquites are yummy and the serving size was great. The Beef Mogo Mogo fried balls were crunchy outside and very tender and soft inside, and a very nice dipped in the sauce. My fav thing so far have been the lamb watercress mini-tacos, which were great - I felt like shouting Cloudy with a Chance of Lamb Taquitos! On the contrary, the frijoles and onion tacos were terrible, tasteless, with chewy fibrous spring onion difficult to masticate.
Most sweets are home-made style. The almond cake with chipotle sauce is ugly looking, but very nice - more a sort of almond panna cotta than a proper cake. The chocolate pan dulce was also very nice - a bare tiny strip of sweet bread and a tiny bowl of hot chocolate.
The home-made sodas are
really tasty, refreshing and thirst quenching, and the perfect
companion if you do not like very sugary drinks with your food. I
have not tried any of their alcoholic beverages.
They change their menu
often, so any of the dishes mentioned here might not be there when you visit, but they have a great variety of foods, which is always great.
THE SERVICE - The staff are terrific and extremely nice. The Mexican waitress is delightful and helpful, and one of the other girls, Aussie I think, even let me browse her own magazine when I asked if the restaurant had one. That is what I call customer service! The other guys were also wonderful. All of them work hard to make your stay enjoyable and their enthusiasm is contagious.
THE PRICING AND THE SIZING - The servings sizes
for primeros, antojitos and postres are Lilliputian, especially the
sweets, which seem to be designed for toddlers. Street food is by definition delicious, unsophisticated and very cheap.
I understand that having street food in a Perth restaurant is not only a
culinary oxymoron, but also impossible to have at the prices you find them in the country of origin. However, If you want to tame your hunger, be prepared to pay a little fortune:
paying +40$ for two snacks, a minuscule sweet and a soda is unaffordable, especially if I leave the place hungry and with the feeling that this is average Mexican food not the real thing.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
1- I find the bilingual menu really cute and funny. However, I have heard too many complaints about it to ignore them. Most people are not bilingual, so an English one would make things easier for everybody. Besides, explaining customers what is exactly what you are ordering is time-consuming.
2- Most of Mexican food is
very spicy and hot. The food in El Público is obviously
adjusted to Australian tastes. I am OK with that. Still it tastes a bit bland. A bit of more spice and hotness
would be just being faithful to the original and would make the dishes yummier.
3 - El Público does not
serve Haute Cuisine but simple Mexican Food, so it would be better
having the description of what it is on the plate written down instead of mentioned when the plate is put on your table.
4 - Get a coffee machine and serve coffee, pleazzz!
5 - Have more Coriander at hand, so when a customer requests an extra pinch of it, you can say no problem, instead of "we are running short of it in the kitchen". Little details make a great difference.
***
There is a lot of hype about El Público. There is no doubt that is a nice place, has nice food and terrific service. It offers much better Mexican food than other Mexican restaurants in Perth, that is for sure. Still, as the Spanish proverb says, "En el Reino de los ciegos el tuerto es el rey" (in the kingdom of the blind, a one-eyed is the King) Honestly, how many Mexicans have you seen eating there?
Location: 7.5/10
Layout: 6.5
Ambience (day): 7.5/10
Service: 9/10
Food: 7/10
Pricing: 6/10
Drinks (non alcoholic): 8/10
TIP
Ask for the bandejas (mains) for lunch as they are more expensive, but also considerably bigger, better value for money, and better filling for your stomach if you are hungry.
TIP 2
The primeros and antojitos are perfect for night slight snacking with your drinks!
UPDATE 21/10/13/
There was half a page in the Sunday newspaper a few weeks ago, after this review was written, with an interview with the cook. What he says helps once more to confirm that we do not have real Mexican food in Perth, as many of the ingredients basic for cooking are not available here and their food is Mexican inspired. But it is not only the ingredients. It is the flavours and spiciness of what we get in Perth, which is in the best case Tex-Mex. There you have it.
625 Beaufort St
Mt Lawley Western Australia 6050
(08) 6161 9436
Website
Facebook
Hours:
Mon-Sun 11:00 - 21:00
Not every place selling burritos should be called Mexican, especially Zambrero. This could be called SubwayMex, as both Subway and Zambrero are similar in concept, preparation methods and service.
THE GOOD
- Zambrero has a spot on
location on Beaufort Street, and has a semi-open seating area that
allows you to focus on the street or just on your food at the central
canteen table or the long one facing the wall. - The food looks and tastes fresh, which is specially important if most of what you put in your meal is salad and veggies.
- Big is big here! So your burrito will appease the monster in your stomach.
- The prices are cheap.
- Service is terrific: the girls are delightful and will attend to you fast and with genuine friendliness.
- Their black board on the footpath always has funny sayings an jokes.
THE BAD
- My chicken burrito was indeed a chicken and rice sort of Indian burrito, which ruined the whole experience, as it was overcooked and did not taste good, and tasted Indian-ish not Mexican-ish.
- So many things put in a burrito and the taste is just OK.
- The tortillas are a bit not tortillas, but wraps...
- The burritos are not burritos but Mexican inspired wraps. They are ugly looking and I did not feel like taking my mobile out for a picture.
- Go to Zambrero knowing that this is not a Mexican place and you won't be eating Mexican food.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- Ask for a burrito whose meat is just grilled or roasted.
- Avoid the cheese, because is the usual cheap cheese that you find in any fast food chain, which can ruin any dish.
- Avoid the sauces, and ask for an extra dollop of sour cream instead.
- This is a perfect place for food emergencies: you are super-hungry, you want to eat right now, and don't want to spend much money, and want to leave full.
I might come back :O
UPDATE
Free guacamole this week with any dish to celebrate the change in their menu.
