Friday, March 27, 2009

Restaurant Review: La Victoria vs. Charlie Palmer

By The Law Reviewers of The Law Reviewers

Like many downtown worker bees, we sometimes fall into a lunch rut; the tunnel system is just too dang convenient, and who can resist the combined aroma of Sonny Bryan’s/A&W/Chic-Fil-A/floor cleaner that wafts streetward weekdays from 11:10 a.m. to 1:25 p.m.? Ah, but sometimes the palate wants something more better… something, how do you say, cheap n’ tasty? Cutting to the chase, La Victoria at 1605 North Haskell Avenue between Ross and San Jacinto, kicks some serious downtown tunnel tushy. Can we say tushy? Tushy.

La Victoria is the kind of place that we wish we had discovered a long time ago, but with the recession/depression/idiocrapocalyse upon us, now is the perfect time to discover La Victoria’s charm. Translation: cheap and plentiful eats. Nestled behind the cover of an old drive-in restaurant, LV doesn’t look like much from the outside. The inside, while tidy, doesn’t exactly say “Look at Me! I’m Charlie Palmer!” either (see below), but that’s OK, if not preferable. There is a small counter, about six tables and you seat yourself, but not before receiving a friendly greeting from the hostess and sole waitperson. The menu is startlingly small and there are no complimentary chips and salsa. Aha, but upon closer inspection, $2.00 breakfast burritos? $2.00 tacos? $5.25 for a “super” burrito? Much less than you’ll pay at the many Mia’s clones around town without sacrificing the quality.

With prices like that, we figured we were in for something so small that it would look like one of the capsules that the Jetsons would eat, before the capsule morphed into a table full of food. Instead, two of those breakfast burritos are more than enough for the average human. At $2 each, La Victoria also offers a plethora of tasty gorditas which in no way resemble the taco-like contraptions hawked by a certain talking Chihuahua with the Che Guevara fetish. The three gorditas we tried were round corn-meal cakes served piping hot from the oven and filled with melted queso blanco and spinach, beans, cheese and jalapeno and chicharron. All of the ingredients, including the spinach and jalapeno, were fresh, not canned like at too many other places in a town that prides itself on its Tex-Mex. The Super Burrito was an efficient capsule stuffed with chicken, cheese, pinto beans, and rice, and quickly grilled so as to make the tortilla into a flaky shell. We splurged the extra $1.50 for chips and salsa; the thick yet smooth salsa makes an excellent topper to the Super Burrito. A belly-filler, the Super Burrito stays true to its name and only appears when hunger strikes. You know, now that we think about it, we’ve never seen Super Burrito and our colleague Nerdy Burrito in the same room…

The food at La Victoria is nothin’ fancy or flashy, just fresh, delicious and quick. On our discounted five gavel scale, where five gavels is the value that second-run movie theaters used to provide, and one gavel is the indignity of paying an extra $5 for earphones to watch “The Old Adventures of New Christine” and a profile of a billionaire on “CBS Eye on American” on a delayed flight, we give La Victoria four gavels, or free shows on the intarwebs, which is a series of tubes.

Nostalgic for our unemployed friend Pac Man Jones, we had our bodyguards follow us to Charlie Palmer at the Joule for lunch, specifically for the recession-special “15-30” lunch we read about recently. Representing the cost of the fixed course lunch ($15) and the time it would take you to order, eat, pay, and throw your bodyguard against a glass fixture in the bathroom (roughly 30 minutes), the 15-30 is a teaser to get foot traffic into such a swanky joint frequented by the likes of Pac Man and other local wannabe Page 6 material. The restaurant's interior has a darkened, supper club vibe that makes you feel like you're in Vegas, which is probably why the Pac Man likes it. The food was not bad, nay, it was for the most part quality grub indeed. You know going into the 15-30 that you are going to get a choice between two half-sandwiches, plus a small side salad and a cup of soup. The soups were the highlight. We tried the pureed black bean soup, which was slightly spicy and a Tuscan white bean soup that had a musky, meaty flavor. Both had the potential to be filling if they weren’t served in tiny, ramekin-like bowls. The salad was a simple but tasty romaine with pesto dressing affair. The half-sandwich was a bit of a let down; it wasn’t bad, but it was basically gourmet turkey or gourmet grilled chicken breast and gourmet cheese on toasted gourmet bread. We add the word “gourmet” because you’re at Charlie Palmer, not Jason’s Deli.

All of this was ordered/consumed/paid for/slammed against glass in the promised 30 minutes, but the portions were so small that we were hungry again two hours later. For $15, we felt like we should get more. Especially with our new friend La Victoria nearby. Think long and hard about the 15-30 before you commit (the regular lunch menu is available, as well as a $26 prix fixe) – two 15-30’s, two teas, and one dessert plus tip is about $58. That’s like 3,000 tacos at La Victoria.

On our rapidly deflating five gavel scale that cannot be traded once its shares hit $0.15, where five gavels is our brilliant investment system that’s guaranteed to beat the market and one gavel is Jim Cramer telling you how this system can't fail the week before it does, we give Charlie Palmer’s 15-30 lunch two gavels, or the value of this lunch in 1996 dollars.

Law Reviewers

Two local attorneys applying their trained legal minds to the world of culinary arts (or at least it's sorta like that).

Michael Anderson (left) with Bracewell & Giuliani; and Anthony Lowenberg (right) with Hermes Sargent Bates.

Pegasus News content partner - The Law Reviewers

Related stories

• Pegasus News content partner interview: The Law Reviewers (June 1, 2009)
• Pegasus News week in view: Ready for your close-up edition (April 2, 2009)

See more stories in:

• Food and Drink > Dining / Restaurants
• Downtown Dallas

Comments

Russ Vandeveerdonk Verified

Question,.. is there a restaurant that serves "shark steaks" on the menu, real shark steaks with lemmon butter and dill on the side? Anyone, Gubbins?

7 months, 2 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

The Law Reviewers Verified

Sorry, Russ, we wouldn't know. Professional courtesy prevents us from eating shark. We suggest calling Dallas Fish Market.

7 months, 2 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )