Taqueria El Charrito/128 Pearl Street/ Chelsea, MA 02150

Not that solid.  Not awful, but considering the amount of competition in the immediate surrounding area, not much worth the trip either. Now I'll be the first to admit that I tend to limit myself at most Guatelsalvadorexican restaurants to the three tacos that I got here, but that's because A: I can't try everything on the menu everywhere I go and B: I happen to like chicken, steak, and lengua tacos. Especially tongue.  I like an occasional carnitas taco thrown in too, purely for its health benefits.  I also generally have a hard time with people that label what they are about to say (especially if the say "A,B, and 3" or "1,2 and C"), but I felt that it was quite appropriate in this instance.

Not great Steak, Chicken, & Lengua Tacos

Not great tacos minus one plus hot sauce

And for those of you that think I have tiny plastic taco pieces that I artfully put together a little bit differently in one of my standard take-out size styrofoam boxes that I keep in the closet for each one of these places that I claim to have visited, you are sorely mistaken.  I realize that tacos almost always look like tacos, but if you look at all of pictures I have posted, each place has its own subtle take on what the taco should be.  Take the radishes, for example.  Not every Guatelsavadorexican restaurant gives you radishes if you don't ask.  And I didn't.  I happen to love radishes with tacos, but that alone won't make me stray from my opinion that this place really doesn't have great tacos.  All the meat was drier than it should have been, except the chicken, which is odd.  Not much flavor to speak of, but it is almost as though they know that and give you their green hot sauce to fix that problem.  See I am most often of the opinion that the majority of places, however bad, have some sort of saving grace.  If they sold this green sauce by the bottle I would buy up a bunch of it for all the Mexican food that I don't know how to make.  It's REALLY good.  But, sadly, I would bring it around with me just to put it on other places' food.  Oh well.  You can't win 'em all.

Pita Mediterranean Cuisine/473 Albany Street/Boston, MA 02118/South End

For some odd reason, every time I drive by South End Pita I seem to be on the wrong side of the median and can't turn around to try it.  I have done this for at least a year, or however long it has been that they have been open.  I decided after breakfast that I would try this place for lunch.  This is how my brain works.  Always thinking about the next meal.

Falafel, Grape Leaf, Tahina Sauce and Salad

Chicken & Lamb Kabob w/Rice & Cabbage

There isn't a whole lot going on on the blocks that surround Pita.  It is directly next to 93, across from the lovely BTD Tow Lot, on the same street as Zapatos and The Boston Flower Market and that really nice looking soccer field. I mention this because it is actually pretty easy to get a parking spot here, unlike most other parts of the South End.  And for anyone that hasn't noticed, the new $1.25 an hour parking rate has already gone into effect.  Funny how quickly things can get done in Boston when the city decides it can make some money.  Yes, yes, I LOVE it here, don't worry.  I t must be the fact that it is the coldest day since January 22, 2005 that is wearing on me.  

So on to the food.

This place is good.  I like Middle Eastern food, but I haven't had any falafel in years.  Not sure why exactly, I just forgot about it, I guess.  I'm sort of glad I waited.  This falafel was perfect, granted, this is coming from someone who hasn't had any for awhile, but it was that nice deep-green-on-the-inside-golden-crispy-brown-on-the-outside type falafel.  I know, I know, I should have broken one in half and taken a picture, but I'll go back again soon.  Great flavor, well accented by the simple, light, tahina sauce on top.

As for the grape leaf, it was fine, good even.  I have an odd relationship with grape leaves.  They seem to me to be pretty much the same everywhere and never overwhelmingly good, but for some reason, you can tell a lot about a place if the grape leaves are better than just OK.  These were not too dry, not overly spiced, not overly lemony or olive oily, good, solid grape leaves (or leaf) all-in-all.  For a meal I got a little twist on one of the daily specials: Chicken and Lamb Kabob with Cabbage and Rice.  Good choice.  It wasn't knock you out amazing, but there was nothing bad to say about it by any means. The rice was white rice with a barely discernible amount of spice and yellowness, the meat was rolled in a simple, not to spicy-hot rub that seemed to be a mix of paprika and black pepper, and grilled perfectly, and the cabbage came served in a little bit of what seemed like tomato sauce with sumac and onions.  The latter was the most interesting part of the dish ("interesting" meaning "good"), but I would like to stress most of all just how beautifully the lamb and chicken were cooked.  And it was that type of lamb that you could introduce to your friends that don't like lamb and they might just change their mind.  I want to try more stuff here.  I didn't get to try the hummus, or the Moroccan Mint Tea, which you can get hot or iced, but the next time that I am on the correct side of the median and hungry, I'll be sure to stop again.  And this time I will get a pic of the inside of the falafel.  Finally, this is a much nicer place on the inside than it looks on the outside.  There are at least 4 or 5 tables in there and it is pretty cozy, not small cozy, comfortable cozy.  

Banh Mi BA LE Vietnamese Restaurant/1052 Dorchester Ave Dorchester, MA 02125

The Four Dollar Lunch.  Not too common, but that's why I'm here, to find these things for you.  Now let me be clear: Cheap≠Good.  Take Taco Bell, for example.  Point made.  Moving on, this four dollar lunch is actually quite good.  It can be found at at Banh Mi BA LE Vietnamese Food Place.  No, that's not exactly what it's called, but it is more than just a restaurant, but also not quite a restaurant restaurant considering there is not one seat in the place.

So I suppose it is a take-out spot, but with more than one kind of self-serve beef jerky by the pound in big plastic bins, tapioca pudding with yucca and banana, coconut dessert, flan, and green dessert things with bubble tea balls in them in the fridge (oh believe me, that is only the beginning as far as sweets in the fridge goes), sticky rice with pork and things wrapped in banana leaves, Vietnamese Sandwiches, noodle dishes of varying types, hot foods that include fried chicken and ginger chicken, fish dishes, pork and beef dishes, sausages, spring rolls, bubble tea, Vietnamese coffee, I could go on and on because it certainly doesn't stop there, but it really needs to be experienced to understand.  Let's just say they have a lot of bases covered without spreading themselves too thin because, quite frankly, they have run out of room to spread themselves any thinner.  I mainly go here when I realize that it has been two or three weeks since I have eaten a fruit or a vegetable and get the rice noodles with fried tofu, broccoli, green beans, celery, and whatever else they have decided to throw in for the day.  Noodles are served with either soy sauce sauce or fish sauce sauce.  

The shrimp spring rolls are nice and healthy (they offer sausage spring rolls too) and are served with peanut sauce or fish sauce sauce.  The spring rolls are $3 or $4.  They have been in the process of raising prices lately from "how the hell do they make any money at this place" low to just ridiculously low.  I would suggest the chicken wings over the breast.  This breast was pretty greasy, the wings not so much.  The ginger chicken picture does it very little justice.  This stuff is great.  $3 for a small order (the same for an order of wings) or $5 with rice.  The sticky rice is best, but they don't make it all that often.  So that is a lot to take in, I realize, but this little Food Place is a lot to take in in person too.  The good thing about Bahn Mi BA LE is that almost everything I have tried here is good to very good.  The bad, and there is little bad to say, is that even with the huge amount of stuff they serve, they won't necessarily have today what they had yesterday if you happened to like it.  Or the next day, or the next, or the same day next week.  But the good here outweighs the bad by a lot, and chances are that whatever you end up trying will be good.  On top of that, it is quite a sensory experience. 

Oasis Brazilian Restaurant /373 Main Street/Medford, MA 02155

Rice, Farofa, Fried Mandioca

Brazuka

I love this place.  No, I mean I really love this place.  If I have people coming in from out of town (even vegetarians), I take them to Oasis.


If friends of mine want to head out for a night on the town, that night more often than not starts at Oasis.  Even the most picky and difficult diners will enjoy a meal at Oasis. Whether you like meat, salt, potatoes, rice, fish, or vegetables, you will like Oasis.  Especially if you like meat and salt.

Potato salad w/carrots, peas, apples, rasins, and other stuff

Fried Banana

Oh, and if you are torn about what to do for dinner on a Thursday and think that watching Brazilian soap operas and listening to odd renditions of Cindy Lauper songs along with The Girl From Ipanema played on acoustic guitar, you are in for a night to remember. The drinks here, alcoholic or not, are great.  Coconut, papaya, cashew, guarana, beer, wine, Caipirinhas, smoothies, all sorts of odd and different things.  The menu is pretty big, and you can order from the menu or get the buffet, but I usually go for the Brazuka which is a choice of steak, steak, sausage, chicken, pork chop, sausage, chicken, steak, in any order, served on a sword.  Yes, a sword.  This meat sword is served with a ridiculous amount rice, farofa (fried cassava flour with bacon), fries or fried yucca, black beans and salad.  95% of the time you can substitute the potato salad for regular salad, as long as the potato salad hasn't run out for the night.  3 people can share a Brazuka, often with some food to bring home, for less than $20.  That's a hard deal to beat.  The only negative thing that I can say about Oasis is that if you order the steak raw, rare, or medium-rare, you are going to get a medium-well done steak.  Very seldom will you find any pink in the steak on the meat sword unless you really stress it to the wait staff, who, by the way, are always sweet and friendly.  Other than that, you can't beat this place.  Everything is always good.

Taco El Paso/ 15 Norwood Street Everett, MA 02149

Solid, consistent, almost West Coast Mexican food.  That's all I ask for.  Boston is considered a world class city, but solid Mexican food is wicked hard to find.  Truly.  Few and far between are decent taco joints (or for that matter, any Mexican-related joints).  Thankfully, we have a healthy population of Guatemalans and El Salvadorans, many with a pretty good feel for Mexican street food.  Most of these mainly faux Mexican restaurants are north of Boston, in Somerville, Everett, East Boston (yes, East Boston is the most northern section of Boston), Chelsea, and Revere.  My go to "I'm hungry and don't want to wait long for some seriously good, cheap tacos" is, and has been for quite some time now, Taco El Paso in Everett, MA.

3 Tacos: Chicken, Steak, Tongue

The pictures here are the pictures of what I get 90% of the time I go to T El P: Chicken (Pollo), Steak (Res), and Lengua (Tongue).  In that order.  Shoot me if you don't like lengua.  I love it and only order the other two for those wonderful readers that would only consider eating the two former meats and not the latter.  These beautiful tacos cost $2 or less (the lengua being the most expensive because, of course, it is the best) and can be garnished with onion, cilantro, pico de gallo, cheese, guacamole, sour cream, etc.....  I like to keep it simple: onions and cilantro with hot sauce.  In good Guatemalsalvadoran fashion, there is a lot more to choose from like burritos, huevos rancheros, rice and beans, fried banana, pupusas, fried yucca, chicharron, it all depends on the day.  I just prefer the tacos to anything else.  The chicharron is pretty good, although I prefer Dominican, Puerto Rican, or Columbian chicharron.  Central American chicharron tends to be less fatty and more salty in my humble opinion.  The pupusas are good, the rice just OK.  The tacos are the most economical, all things considered.

Fried Banana w/rice flour and cinnamon

I had dessert, which was good but not great.  Well-fried banana with rice flour and cinnamon inside.  Pretty good, it just had been sitting around for a while.  In the summer T El P usually has Hibiscus, Horchata, and some other form of refreshing drink.  Solid Mexican.  Good prices.  Nice people.  Certainly worth the trip to Everett.

Caribe Restaurant/Uphams Corner/14 Hancock Street/Dorchester, MA 02125

More often than not, even somewhere that you may not be that fond of has some sort of saving grace.  Other than Gary, Indiana, that is.  But even Gary probably has a decent barbecue joint or two.  Caribe Restaurant on Hancock Street in Upham's Corner had no such saving grace today.  Today was not the first time I thought about stopping here.  Parking is tough, and Yanet is not far away, but today I took the plunge.

Mondongo (the best of the bunch, believe it or not)

 What a waste of time.  This is a day that I have somehow dreaded.  I knew that it was inevitable, but my first really bad review of a restaurant was not something I was looking forward to.  Not only because I realize that running a restaurant is hard and some little shitbag talking badly about your restaurant is the last thing you want to deal with at the end of the day, but also because I have enough bad meals within the course of a week.  A purely horrible meal, although par for the course at some point considering this is a food review blog, is never a welcome prospect.  If I go to a Latin restaurant that I have never patronized, I know that at least trying the chicharron will make for a worthy trip.

Boring Chicharron

Even the chicarron at Caribe is boring and basically flavorless.


I didn't even have the urge to eat the pieces of fat and skin that I usually leave so that I can fool myself into thinking that the meaty part of the deep-fried fat back is some how perfectly fine, healthy cuisine.  I never leave all of them mind you, just 40-70%.  You can take what you would like from this review, since my main meal was bacalao and mondongo with rice and beans.  The majority of those that live in this country would touch neither bacalao nor tripe, but I happen to very much enjoy both of these delicacies.  After a very disappointing appetizer in the chicharron, I tried the bacalao, which tasted like it was cooked in either ketchup or Hunt's tomato sauce and nothing else. Except maybe some extra salt because it was rediculously salty.  Even after drowning it in hot sauce it was close to inedible.  And the rice was horrendously dry and flavourless.

Questionable Bacalao w/ crappy Yellow Rice

Keep in mind, that I walked in here at a little after 5 p.m. on a Friday.  You may want to show your A-game at dinner time on a Friday.  Just a suggestion.  I question myself as to why I didn't just walk right out without ordering, because nothing looked particularly good or fresh.  What looked the tastiest, and I hope that I don't regret this for the next 3 or 4 days, was the mondongo, so against any kind of intuition, I decided on that.  That may be akin to getting sushi late at night on a Sunday after an early evening blackout that National Grid is still working the kinks out of in an establishment that was suspect to begin with, but I hadn't eaten since 11, so I was hungry and not thinking straight.  The only good thing about the mondongo was the sauce it was in, but the tripe itself was stinkier than it should have been and had kind of a fishy taste.  Like I said, I hope I don't regret this for the next 5 or 6 days.  Gross.  That's my final verdict.  The food here is gross.  No way will I go back.  Don't bother.  I'd go back to Gary, Indiana before I'd ever bother going back here.

Besides, Yanet is right around the corner.  So don't waste your time here.

Yanet Restaurant/ 734 Dudley St./ Upham's Corner/ Dorchester, MA 02125

Sweet, sweet Yanet Restaurant.  It's in Upham's Corner.  The parking is more than tricky, and the traffic sucks at rush hour, but it is oh-so worth the trouble.  Crunchy, salty, meaty, fatty, chicharron is just the beginning.  The yucca here is perfect in every way, though minus the red onions.  Depending on the day, you can find 4 different kinds of rice.  I prefer the yellow rice with green peas, but yellow rice with sausage is a special weekend treat.  The bacalao at Yanet is tied for the best I have ever had.  Not only is it soaked perfectly, but the onions and peppers are fresh, crunchy, and a perfect addition to the feigned-fresh fish.  The baked chicken is tender,

Yellow Rice w/Green Peas, Bacalao, and Baked Chicken

moist, and substantial whether you order the $7 small or the $9 medium (this pic is of the $9 medium).  There is a lot more to choose from at Yanet, but I am addicted to the chicken and bacalao.  Stewed beef, chicken, pork, oxtails, take your pick.  If you are hungry, Yanet will not disappoint.  On top of the wonderful food, Yanet, the owner, is the sweetest abuelita you have ever met.  Go now.  Eat it.  It will make you happy.