Food Quest Part #2

Round #2

Next up on the Food Quest to find the best Mexican food in Alaska is La Mex. I saw this one driving down one of the main roads in Anchorage around lunch time and it was packed, so it had to be a good sign, right. Well, cars in the parking lot did not turn out to be a good sign at Carlos, but you don't have much to go off of in this town. It's not as easy in Texas where you just ask your Mexican neighbor or grounds keeper for advice.

As  a reminder the evaluation categories are listed below.

Mexican Review Categories (scale 1:5)

• Margaritas (1 = Watered down Costco Mix, 5 = Cyclone Anayas)
• Chips and Salsa (1= Tostitos Chips and canned salsa, 5 = Chuy's thin chips and chunky salsa)
• Queso and/or Guacamole ( 1= Barely melted cheese, 5  = Escalante's white cheese queso)
• Fajitas (1 =Just meat and veggies, 5 = Cyclone Anayas Special Fajitas)
• Enchiladas (1= Frozen isle special, 5 = Megs Sour Cream Enchiladas

Before I talk about the food, I have to address the name. La Mex, seriously, the only worse name is Mexico In Alaska (which does exist by the way). The name is why we started with Carlos's. Which sounds better to you, La Mex or Carlos' Fine Mexican Food. I know..... Well, names are deceiving especially in this case.

La Mex

• Margaritas =2.5
• Picture below is there house Margarita and I will say it tastes as good as it looks. I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of there margarita, which honestly is not saying much after how bad last weeks was.
• Chips and Salsa = 1.0
• Is it rude to bring our own chips from Costco next time we come since it's right across the street?
• Queso and/or Guacamole = 3.0
• Queso= 1.0
• Or that is what they called it. Which was a good sign that they even had it on the menu, because Carlos did not even have queso on their menu. However, it was about as far from queso as Anchorage is from Mexico City (~5,000 miles). It was like queso colored salsa with watered down football hockey stadium nacho cheese  added. Yea, we did not even finish it, which does not happen with anything cheese related in our household.
• Guacamole = 3.0
• Well done. The guacamole carried La Mex in this category. It was very well done and had good flavor. We will definitely be getting more of it next time!
• Fajitas  = 2.5
• All in all the Fajitas were not bad, but the homemade tortillas carried them in this category. 10 times better than what we had last week. The fajitas also had some Mexican flavor and a good serving of grilled peppers and onions along with it. I'm guessing we may not find better in Alaska, but we are going to try.
• Enchiladas =  2.0
• This category is the only one that Carlos slightly edged out La Mex. The sauce on the enchiladas at Carlos' was better than La Mex. However, next time we are going to try the street tacos. Pictured below. I think we may have ordered the wrong thing.

Next stop Las Magaritas.... will it live up to its name in the Margarita Category? Tune in next week to find out.

In case you were curious, the darkness is starting to get noticable easpecially in the morning. I am not seeing the sun outside of my western facing office until 9am and the sun is setting around 7:30pm. #WestillmissTexas

Xoxo,,
W, M , EK