As the scion of a New Mexico homestead family from the early 1900’s I have been eating Southwestern Style Mexican food my entire life (72 years). Since I live about two miles from the Gold Country ****** in Oroville, California, we decided to try their new Agave Mexican restaurant. The ****** completely remodeled the old buffet dining area into a nice looking new restaurant. The ambiance was well appointed and tastefully done is a Southwestern style motif. My wife, son, and I were promptly and courteously seated. Here’s where the “niceties” ended. A slick, double sided, single page menu was presented along with the obligatory corn chips and salsa. The chips were warm and fresh but the salsa was weak and bland. The menu’s offerings were somewhat limited as I expected more from such a locale and the effort to remodel. I ordered a combination plate of an enchilada, chili relleno, taco, rice, and refried beans. The meat was to be ground beef, NOT shredded beef. The sauce red, not green. The food arrived and I noticed a dark red almost molé-style sauce covered both the single enchilada and the relleno. My curiosity compelled me to taste the sauce singularly. My discriminating palate cried “foul!” What is this!? Surely not a “red” or enchilada sauce!? It was horrible! It may even have been an attempt at a molé, perhaps? Since both the enchilada and the relleno were covered in this goo my dinner was ruined! Next, I tried the refried beans. Never, in the seven decades of eating refried beans, have I had them served in a small separate casserole dish. What pretentiousness is this?! I thought. But the issue here was not the delivery but the appearance of these beans! Now, everyone knows that the backbone, the very essence, of a Mexican lunch or dinner are the frijoles. You fail the beans, you fail the meal! Period. Agave failed the bean test! The beans were covered in a thick crust of melted (jack?) cheese and were white in color. Yes, white! Upon tasting they were, well, tasteless! Not a hint of pinto bean flavor! Fail! Moving on to the taco one bite exposed yet another failure: the beef was shredded, NOT the ground beef I had ordered! The taco was small and not appropriate for a combo plate. Perhaps it was snatched from an appetizer plate in the kitchen? The one thing that came to me was thank God for Taco Bell! Whoever made this taco would be fired from any respectable taco assembly line! On to the poor little smothered-in-faux-enchilada -GOO-sauce “enchilada”. I use quotes here because this, certainly is NOTCHO DADDY’s enchilada! This thing was all of about four inches long, folded over like a pathetic omelette, lightly encasing, yep, you guessed it SHREDDED BEEF!! AAARRGEEHHH! Having failed frijoles, tacos, enchilada sauce, salsa…….what was I expecting?! The enchilada and the relleno, having been rendered inedible by the aforementioned GOO compelled me to next move on to the rice portion of the combo plate. The rice was delightful, the one shining sta
Excellent
99 Reviews