SEBASTIAN — We headed to Ay! Jalisco on a recent Wednesday night as dark clouds moved in from the west, bringing the threat of a bad thunderstorm.
With that dreary sky in the forecast, we figured we’d have no problem getting a table. We were right – but our lack of a wait had more to do with Ay! Jalisco’s recent expansion than with the weather.
The restaurant opened a new bar and dining area about a month ago. Even with the new space, the place was fairly busy by anyone’s mid-week standards.
The new bar and dining area features a gleaming wood bar and about a dozen tables and booths on the north side of the building where a parking lot once stood.
The addition features handsomely carved wood chairs and bar stools that blend in seamlessly with the rest of this popular restaurant.
Before checking out the menu, we ordered a frozen margarita ($4.95), a bottle of Heineken ($3.25) and a Dos Equis Amber draft ($2.50).
I’ve always liked the Dos Equis Amber drafts at Ay! Jalisco which are inexpensive and some of the coldest drafts you’ll ever encounter, a great accompaniment to any Mexican meal.
A basket of chips and salsa arrived at our table right away, but for appetizers, we opted to also try the Ay! Jalisco platter ($9.95) a combination of shredded beef taquitos, cheese quesadilla and nachos accompanied by salsa, sour cream and guacamole.
The taquitos – small rolled, tacos – were particularly tasty with a slathering of guacamole.
The quesadilla was a soft flour tortilla with cheese and went great with layered with a little salsa, sour cream and guacamole.
The nachos were crisp and covered in cheese. I thought the price for the appetizer was a bit high for what we got.
For dinner, I ordered the pescado a la Vercruzana ($11.49), my wife picked a combination dinner ($9.29) of bean burrito, bean tostado and cheese enchilada, a friend selected camarones al mojo de ajo ($10.95) while her husband picked the fajitas combination ($12.99) of chicken and flank steak.
Our waiter, Mario, has been at Ay! Jalisco for four years and was attentive without being intrusive.
He noted the new addition opened a month ago and that was a good thing because it was hard finding a seat on a Friday or Saturday night.
When our dinners arrived, Mario’s eagle-eye noted that my wife’s dinner was not the vegetarian dish she ordered. He quickly and unobtrusively took the plate back to the kitchen to remedy the order and her food was back within minutes.
My wife thought Ay! Jalisco did a good job with her dinner and had no complaints with the dish.
“It was good, comfort Mexican food,” she said. “It’s what you would expect.”
I liked my Pescado a la Vercruzana very much. The dish featured a generous tilapia fillet in a tangy marinara/Chablis mix of black olives, onions, tomatoes and capers. I’m not a big fan of tilapia, but the ingredients added quite a bit of zest to it.
I’d also suggest replacing the black olives with green ones, a feature of my favorite Mexican fish dish – Huachinango a la Veracruzana, which is basically prepared the same way, but the fish is red snapper.
One of our companions was pleased with his fajitas, a large iron skillet full of seasoned meat and chicken with a huge plate of rice, beans and greens.
In fact, he took one look at the plate before the skillet arrived and suggested that could be a meal in itself.
The plate came with four flour tortillas. I’d suggest they add a few more tortillas to the mix because there is more than enough food to put into them. He brought a lot of his dinner home in a box.
His wife was more than pleased with her garlic shrimp plate. Her shrimp were meaty, not tiny hard-to-find things in a sea of onion, and not overdone with garlic, just enough to complement the plate without overwhelming it or her companions on the ride home.
There are plenty of reasons that Ay! Jalisco continues to pack people in for both lunch and dinner. The employees are friendly and smiling without being cloying; the wait staff is very attentive; the meals are big and diners won’t have to take out a second mortgage to pay for dinner.
Dinner with drinks for two and an appetizer will run about $40 plus tip. That’s not bad on a landscape where sometime very routine fare will easily double that.
The bottom line is that when the four of us waddled out to the car we were satisfied, happy and feeling good about what we just ate.
The reviewer is a local resident who dines anonymously at restaurants at the expense of Sebastian River News.