Of course, The Lunch is not about who’s inside the restaurant kitchen but what’s coming out of it. Yet the profusion of Hispanic cooking talent in the Twin Cities should itself be an indication of the availability of superior Mexican fare. We’ve partaken and described meals in Indian, French, Chinese, Vietnamese, Italian, Greek, Middle Eastern, Thai, and Japanese establishments. The lack of any Mexican restaurant review in our archives has needed to be corrected. We have in fact been thwarted twice; once in St. Paul where we went to La Corvina and discovered it had gone out of business and again a couple of months ago in Richfield where we found Taco Morelos closed for a special occasion.

This week we remedied this omission with a repeat, and consummated, visit to Morelos. There are two restaurants of the same name in the Minneapolis area; the one in Richfield we went to is an offshoot of the original Eat Street place. I prefer the Richfield one and go there often for dinner or weekend lunches. However, this was the first time I’d been there for a weekday lunch and the first time I’d seen their separate lunch menu.

Morelos Richfield recently obtained a beer and wine license so now you can get a good variety of Mexican beers there too, including Bohemia. I did the nonalcoholic thing and ordered a horchata—a Mexican drink made with ground rice, almonds, sugar, and other ingredients. Other beverages available that you won’t find at the Old Country Buffet across the street include "Jamaica" and tamarind natural drinks and Mexican sodas, including Mexican coke.

The service includes complimentary chips that come with a salsa and a spicy, almost creamy sauce that are both very good. Usually the chips are perfectly light and crisp but they were a little heavy today.

You can order off either the lunch menu (which also lists breakfast items and is available from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.) or the regular, larger menu. Breakfast items all have eggs as an ingredient—a sampler: eggs with chorizo; tortilla casserole and two eggs any style; two eggs over easy on fried tortilla topped with ranchero salsa or Devil Mary style; diced bacon, two eggs, rice, beans, guacamole, and sour cream. There are about a dozen lunch items, including a quesadilla, a taco salad, a Mexican sandwich, tostadas, enchiladas, and burritos. Most of these can be ordered in various ways, with a particularly large variety of meats to choose from: fish, steak, chicken, chorizo, pork in green salsa, barbequed pork, beef tongue, and others. The less standard fare includes taquitos de papa, three deep fried potato taquitos topped with beans, cream, and cheese with guac and other sides, and tarasca tortilla soup—roast tomatoes, garlic, onions fried tortilla and ancho strips, avocado, and pork rind in chicken stock. Also in this latter category are chalupas, which is what I ordered. You get three small grilled tortillas (more the size of soft tacos than what I think of as tortillas) topped with a choice of sauces—salsa, "green," mole, and ranchero—and with cream, cheese, and chopped onions. I believe I got the latter three sauces—we had some communication problems with our waitress—but the cheese and onions in any case dominated the taste. Everything was fresh, however, and although I wasn’t really in a vegetarian mood and would have ordered some carne if I’d studied the menu more carefully I enjoyed the dish with its subtle flavors.

Other things I’ve had (off the regular menu) at Morelos and would recommend highly are the pork in chile verde, the tamales, and especially the chicken in mole poblano. The beans that come with most dishes are excellent, sometimes incredible, and the grilled jalapeno on the side leaves no excuse for complaints of blandness, not that they would be warranted in any event.

I ordered a dessert also but this was a bit of a disappointment. It was rice pudding and it came in a small crispy, cinnamon-dusted fried dough shell. The shell was wonderful but the rice pudding, while it tasted good, was straight-out-of-the-refrigerator cold and gloppy.

Although this visit wasn’t as successful as most of my meals there, I rate Morelos as highly as the Mexican restaurants in the Mexican neighborhood in the south side of St. Paul (although it doesn’t attempt to compete on pure authenticity of the Mexican dining experience). You can tell that the restaurant is a passion for the owners. It’s not just the freshness and quality of the food, but also the very good service (which had the right priorities on this visit of ours: high on friendliness and charm and low on English language skills) and the time that must have been expended on the interior decorations. These range from old appliances such as a manual phonograph and crank-handle telephone to colorful murals including one of a Mexican kitchen to hats and small rugs and carved wooden animal figures dotting the wooden beams and adobe-like walls. From the first look as you enter the restaurant to the tasty Mexican milk caramel candies that come to you with your bill, Morelos is a multisensory treat.

Taco Morelos started life as a one-room restaurant on Eat Street a few years ago. There were no frills here; no welcoming mariachi band, just plain honest Mexican food served with a minimum of fuss and almost no English. Since then Gaspar Rey Perez—the owner of Taco Morelos—has expanded his operations to Richfield with a new restaurant under the same moniker. Alas the location is in a suburban strip mall albeit an old first ring suburb. But even so the restaurant is roomier and some care has been taken in getting the décor right – I was reminded of Tijuana especially by the small animal statues that line the walls. The color scheme is suitably warm and tropical. The seating is divided between booths and tables. The booths are comfortably large and are on a side away from the entrance.

I can’t imagine what wine would go with Mexican food (or South Asian for that matter) and I always order beer – in this case a bottle of Pacifico Clara, a light lager well suited for warm weather and hot food.

The lunch menu is divided between breakfast and lunch entrées. The breakfast dishes can be had for lunch and I was mightily tempted by the likes of eggs chipothidos (eggs scrambled in fried tortilla strips and chipotle sauce), burrito de huevo con chorizo (spicy sausage, eggs, rice & beans, served with guacamole and cream) and eggs Mexican style (scrambled eggs with tomatoes, onions and jalapenos peppers). Keeping with the "no frills" theme the menu doesn’t list any appetizers. The menu offers a choice of meats, with which any of the dishes can be prepared, that range from the ordinary (chicken) to the exotic (beef tongue). And no A didn’t order the beef tongue, though I seem to recollect that he’s had it before. The lunch dishes are fairly typical: burritos, quesadillas, chimichangas and chulupas. A dish that caught my eye and could have served as a possible appetizer was taquitos de papa (three deep fried potato taquitos topped with beans, cream and cheese).

For my main dish I ordered the dos tacos, these come in hard or soft shell I chose the soft shell and chicken as my choice of meat. These were excellent, the tacos soft and pliable enough to pick up and eat. The shredded chicken was spicy and aromatic. The rice and beans alone would have made a most satisfactory meal and if you’re used to beans at a place like Don Pablo you’re in for a pleasant surprise. For dessert I had a flan that was pretty uninteresting apart from a slight citrus flavor whose source I was unable to discern. The bill came to $25.00 and was well worth it.

This is the best Mexican restaurant in Minneapolis. In St. Paul the east side offers some competition, especially as far as atmosphere is concerned. I am happy to report that although Taco Morelos has moved to the suburbs it has taken some of its inner city grit with it and has firmly kept English out.

B.