Chipotle is now open at the Mall of America, on the same floor as Qdoba (3rd) and in the same food court as Baja Sol (South). You officially couldn't avoid a giant burrito at the mall if you tried.
Cantina #1, the new Mexican resort town-themed restaurant, is also open up on the 4th floor. You might miss it completely if you didn't know it was there, since there's nothing else occupying the upper level expanse besides Hooters next door. Luckily, Cantina #1 has been sending me press releases for a few months, so I remembered it was open when I was at the MOA yesterday looking for a new belt.
To sum it up in a sentence, if the Cheesecake Factory opened up a Mexican restaurant, this would be it. The place is huge, with ambitiously ample seating for a MOA restaurant. The booths are enormous and the bar--situated in the center of one of two large dining areas, each with its own host stand--will easily accommodate any and all shoppers looking for a quick beer or margarita to break up the retailing monotony. It doesn't remind me one bit of being in Mexico, but nice try with the sporadic greenery and faux-thatched hut over the bar. One bonus point awarded for the Spanish tutorial CDs playing in the bathroom.
The investment group that opened Cantina #1 (the second of apparently 20-plus more locations planned) heavily licensed the Corona name from Grupo Modelo and, as a result, either the beer's name or its trademark font type is everywhere in the restaurant. There's even Corona in a couple of cocktails, some of which I wasn't feeling brave enough to try at 4:30 in the afternoon. I know, I know, but seriously; vodka, Corona and Sierra Mist? Or cherry vodka, Corona and grenadine? Nah thanks.
Instead I opted for a sure thing: one of my favorite summer drinks, the michelada ($4.00). I've heard micheladas referred to as "bloody beers," which makes sense as they're essentially spicy bloody mary mix over ice in a pint glass, with the rest of the glass filled with an easy-drinking Mexican beer like Corona or Modelo. (At home I go a little ghetto and use V8, fresh lime wedges and Tapatio sauce, since I always seem to have those things around.)
The salted rim combined with the extreme salt content of Cantina #1's house bloody mary mix made my mouth pucker, even after filling my glass to the top with the accompanying Coronita. Too salty to be refreshing and far too heavy on the Worcestershire sauce (I should've asked), but definitely spicy enough for my liking. I wanted to order a torta to eat, but they're only available from 11:00am-4:00pm, so I went with the poblano pepper and corn quesadillas ($7.79).
They forgot to put corn in mine (how do you miss one of three ingredients?), but I didn't gripe about it since I was more curious about trying the different salsas. The house red salsa tastes more like my homemade spaghetti sauce than anything borne from Mexico, heavy on the herbs and canned tomatoes. The green "patron" salsa was better, made mostly from fresh blended serranos. Both were kind of a miss with the appetizer, though; the flour tortilla quesadillas tasted better with the standard pico de gallo that accompanied them.
In addition to the quesadilla option in the appetizer section, there was only one other vegetarian item on the menu, but I didn't feel like sitting at a mall bar by myself and polishing off a cheese enchilada platter with beans and rice. It was bad enough a gentleman customer who was clearly an off-duty Cantina #1 bartender tried to buy me another michelada; I said no for myriad reasons, the first of which being I really didn't want to stay any longer than I had to. Again, envision sitting alone at the Cheesecake Factory.
Service overall was slow and a little confused. My poblano and corn sans corn quesadilla had a 15-minute ticket time, hardly excusable in a mostly empty restaurant where the staff outnumbered the patrons 2 to 1. The bartender serving me didn't check back on my food until I was on the last bite, and only then was it to tell me that the aforementioned off-duty employee wanted to buy me a drink. I overheard a server asking the bartender what he was making (my michelada), which I had to laugh about since it's at the top of their drink menu. Employees are still adjusting to the operation, pulling at their uniforms and getting acquainted with one another.
The food and drinks aren't expensive, nor does it seem like they're exceptional. Obviously, I was limited to what I could try, but the menu doesn't read much differently than that of Chevy's across the street from the mall. It's another option for the local lunch crowd (easy in, easy out from the ramp) and will probably pull in its fair share of weekend MOA tourists looking for family-friendly food and ice cold beer or coconut cocktails.
P.S. I did find a belt. Nordstrom Rack got a truckload in yesterday and I scored a sweet brown Lulu belt for $5.97.
P.P.S. I let that off-duty bartender pay for the one michelada I ordered.
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