Buena Pinta bills itself as "fine Mexican cuisine." The ambience is casual. A colorful interior in rust and gold is decorated with lots of artwork and mirrors; booths painted white line one side of the room.
I always order margaritas in Mexican restaurants. Buena Pinta's version, a pale aqua in color, tasted like chemicals and water. A complaint with the returned portion brought the response, "Hope it's better next time."
Food choices fared better, for the most part, and I found a few things I would order again.
Servers promptly deliver dark red, fairly spicy salsa with heavy tomato flavor accompanying crisp corn chips (gratis).
Deep Fried Avocado ($4.50) slices are coated with bread crumbs and fried dark brown, although the interior remains tender, almost creamy. This comes with that tomato salsa plus spicy mayonnaise. Spicy Shrimp ($6.75) features four large shrimp, deveined, with a dried tomato and chili topping. A pleasant smoky effect emerges from grilling, although they had been cooked a bit firm. These are served over a bed of iceberg lettuce, tomato slices, and raw onions but no dressing, which just wastes those ingredients.
The kitchen offers a choice of soft flour or crisp corn tortillas to enclose bean, chicken or beef Tacos ($7.25 for two). The beef is shredded, producing flavor akin to roast beef, augmented by lots of shredded cheese, plus lettuce and tomato. The chicken version included all breast meat in my serving, albeit a little firm and dryish, but pleasant enough.
The exterior of Chicken Quesadillas ($7.50) bear a pleasant, firm texture, nicely browned, enclosing thin strips of firm chicken in melted cheese. Albondigas ($7.50) turned out to be my favorite item. Soft meatballs (the menu says three, but my serving contained four) are fairly spicy-hot, richly flavored, served in thick gravy surrounded by rice, which absorbs the gravy and conveys additional flavor.
Entrées come with a small salad consisting of a thin layer of leaf lettuces over shredded iceberg lettuce, cubes of tomato, and lots of shredded cheese. The house "vinaigrette" is the first I have ever encountered that appears to be mayonnaise based.
A fried flour tortilla which produces good flavor of its own is filled with tender, shredded fresh chicken and lots of onions in a Chimichanga ($13.75). Vegetables included a strip of eggplant, yellow bell peppers, lots of almost raw onions, and a piece of mushroom. Salsa and sour cream round out the plating.
Beef Enchilada ($11.75) is hearty — two soft corn tortillas filled with shredded beef, seasoned with a little chili and onions plus shredded cheese. But I was disappointed with Beef Fajitas ($14.50). Lots of sautéed orange, red, and green bell peppers, plus onions surrounded the meat and created very good vegetable flavors, but the strips of beef were tough and weak-flavored.
Servers are pleasant and earnest, but they were not able to provide much information about even the most basic questions. A formal training program could legitimately be considered out of reach for a place as small as this, but its intimacy also provides an opportunity for informal tutoring, which appears to have been absent.
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