El Caribe

El Caribe is located on North Lamar just south of 2222, sort of across the street from the big ass Half Price Books. It's nestled into a little strip mall thingy, and is easy to miss if you're not looking for it carefully.

Their claim to fame is their extensive salsa bar, offering around six different varieties. Of course, we got some of everything, and wrecked a basket of chips in about 90 seconds. Weirdly enough, though all the salsas were tasty, none of them really made my soul glow. My fave was a fairly mild avocado based sauce.

Jarod and I both opted for the very cost effective lunch special. You get two entree selections and two side selections for $5.95. Very nice on the wallet.

I opted for a fajita taco and a chicken chalupa for my mains and refried beans and chicken soup(!) for my sides. The soup was a standout. Just having a tasty chicken soup as a side option is great, and it tasting as good as it did was a major bonus.

The fajita taco was delicious. The tex-mex style strips of flank steak were well seasoned and tender, the veggies were fresh, and the tortilla was dismal. I'd call it a just above average tex-mex fajita taco. The chicken chalupa was dead average. It was tasty enough, but didn't really grab my attention.

The refried beans were also good, but not exceptional. I had a bite of Emily's charro beans, and they were FANTASTIC. Skip the refrieds when you go and get with the bacony goodness of the charro beans.


Overall, I was very satisfied, though not blown away by my visit to El Caribe. I'd recomnend it for lunch if it's near your office.

El Caribe - 3.5 stars - Cornbiter Deluxe