Audio By Carbonatix
Ten minutes since arrival. Chips. We are swimming in chips. Two large baskets. And it’s taken 10 minutes to get these. They are crisp, well salted, and without that pubescent facial sheen that makes you feel as though you’re about to eat scraps of Southwestern-style no-wax flooring. Each basket is accompanied by a pair of sauces: a roasted pepper blend, I think, and a tepid tomatillo, the standard red-and-green duo.
So there are plenty of chips at our table, enough to tile the floors in the downtown bus station’s restrooms. Yet what we really crave are drinks to help digest the long drive to Glenn Heights from Dallas. Specifically, grande margaritas. But we can’t seem to find a server–just runners delivering baskets of chips and dishes of salsa. Whoops. Here come reinforcements for our table.
Twenty minutes. Now, I’m not saying La Cascada‘s service is inept. A waiter did pass by and toss us a startled look, as if he were appalled to see us sitting at a table unattended and waiting for…more chips. But that startled look didn’t translate into anything but passing concern, which perhaps was a blessing. We soon realized it was possible to enjoy a nutritious meal of chips and salsa and completely avoid a dinner tab.
Thirty minutes. We finally receive our menus. But during the time since being seated, we’ve learned that it’s possible to cherish each and every moment; vivid tequila cravings focus your attention, and you sort of wake up and smell the tomatillo salsa. Now, I’m not saying La Cascada’s wait staff facilitated a spiritual experience, but they did afford us an opportunity to drink in the ambience–since there was nothing else to drink. La Cascada inhabits a sprawling building, one that resembles a pricey ranch house or maybe a funeral home. The parking lot is loaded with pickups, and not the standard Tonka toys you see parked in tract-house garages. These are the big, long, four-door diesel variety with tires and torque that could fling mud balls into orbit.
The outside is strung with lights, endless lights. You get the impression that maybe this place should be serving baskets of red, white, and blue plastic chips instead of the triangular corn kind. The interior has lots of lights as well, and it’s bright and clean with textured ceilings and a combination of wooden barrel chairs and vinyl-upholstered cafeteria chairs. There are also green vinyl-covered booths in one area and little alcoves of vases and sculptures illuminated by harsh halogen lights. This is not the place for dusky romantic dining.
Thirty-five minutes: The front of the menu is colorful with a laser-printed picture of chili peppers. Directly under the peppers are the drink offerings. We order drinks and turn down an offer of more chips. Suspecting that it will be a good long wait before we see a server again, we attempt to sneak our appetizer order in with the drinks, but our server disappears before we can get the words out.
Forty-five minutes: Our drinks arrive and are quickly emptied. We become bored reading the menu. We are bored with the chips too, and hope that we can expedite the food delivery so that we have something to go with our drinks other than a thick aftertaste of corn and tomatillo. So we trip our server and put in an order for ceviche and the La Cascada Fiesta, an appetizer grab bag. We tag our entrées onto the end of the appetizer order.
Fifty minutes: A runner comes by to see if we want any more chips. We give her a homicidal look.
Fifty-five minutes: Our La Cascada Fiesta arrives: crisp and tasty chicken flautas that are a little mealy; chewy, gooey fajita-steak nachos with well-seasoned flesh covered with lots of melted yellow; and jalapeño soppresos, battered and deep-fried peppers stuffed with cream cheese that are gold-black, dry, and a bit overcooked, with pepper stems that look like spent match sticks.
Ceviche, with marinated shrimp, fish, and scallops, was an entirely different matter, a mutation of the form unlike any we had ever seen. Two avocadoes are halved and scooped clean. Into the shells is poured the slightly fishy seafood (marinated in lemon, not lime) swimming in a tomato sauce with onion and cilantro. Atop the mixture are placed wedges of hard, under-ripe avocado. The avocado bowls are arranged on a bed of lettuce, between them neatly fanned rows of…saltines, dozens of them. You’d expect perhaps a corn chip of some kind, but saltines?
One hour, 10 minutes: Our entrées arrive, but not before another runner comes by to see if we want more chips. After sampling the offerings, we wonder whether perhaps we should have stuck with the chips. The A La Tampiquena, a grilled tenderloin steak served with guacamole, pico de gallo, and rice and beans, is a strip of dry, chewy beef.
Beef also suffered in the chili relleno: It is shredded and inserted into a wrinkled, overcooked pepper. The meat is tough and exuded a slightly off flavor that refused to be clouded by a carpet of cheese and a flood of ranchera sauce.
Overall the seafood fared better, but not by a wide margin. And it’s funny how virtually every dish, with sides of rice and beans and slathered in red sauce, look the same, as if the dishes were designed to be interchangeable. La Veracuzana, a red-snapper fillet buried in a clumsy spicy red Veracruz sauce (tomatoes, olive oil, capers, chilies) cluttered with unpitted green olives, was overcooked, dry, and waxy.
These textural taints afflicted the pescado de la casa, fresh trout in garlic-butter sauce. While the flesh was sweet and tasty, it was spongy and tough.
Yet fish assumes loftiness in the enchiladas de marisco. Chewy, sweet fish, shrimp, and scallops are enveloped in supple, moist tortillas and blanketed in ranchero sauce. (There is also a choice of sour cream or spicy tomatillo sauce.) The flavors on the plate merged well.
One hour, 30 minutes: For dessert, a basket of delicious sopaipillas and honey was delivered minutes after the order was placed. One thing La Cascada excels at is delivering baskets–when the chips are down.
