An Ill Wind.... [+El Tinajon]

How to make my wife and me walk out of a restaurant for the first time in our lives:

1: Forget that you seated us. We certainly were not lost in the crowd, as there were several empty tables. We are, I guess, pretty bland.
2: Walk around talking to friends sitting at other tables while continuing to ignore us.
3: Bring aforementioned friends their OJ or coffee (this was breakfast; people really want their coffee....) before us, even though we were seated before they arrived.
4: When I finally get your attention, tell me to wait, that you are going to circle the room in a set pattern and will get to us. Presumably as an afterthought when the important people have been served.

That was when we left. No names, but we were bitchn about the experience all the way down Roscoe. We are not likely to return soon, even though we have been there several times and liked it OK.

The nice part was, this left us even more hungry, so we decided to chance a place we had passed on the way there, where we had never been, called El Tinajon.

Very pleasant. Good food, nice people, decent coffee, strange Guatemalan oatmeal on the house, and classical music being played on marimbas. You haven't heard Grieg until you've heard him on marimba.

Cheaper, too.

We were pleased enough that we gave the approximate difference in the checks as extra tip.

So now our new standard go-to place on Roscoe is El Tinajon.

corydalus wrote:No names, but we were bitchn about the experience all the way down Roscoe.

Not naming the place is your prerogative, of course, but I come to LTHForum to find out where to go and where not to go, and keeping the place a secret cheats me of that vital information. Maybe you'll reconsider. (Unless there's a clue in your thread title, but if so, it's not speaking to me.)

Ah, El Tinajon. I had completely forgotten about that place. They used to be on Western, almost under the "el" tracks south of where Lincoln crosses. The restaurant was small with a little stage in the back of the room. I haven't eaten there since they moved.

How was the food? Has it changed much in all these years? And what exactly is the address.

Thanks

I would guess it rhymes with bitchin and is on roscoe.

Not if it was half empty on Saturday morning it doesn't.

See now I would guess it's next door to the "rhymes with Bitchin'", as at that place, I've seen some damn rude service myself. However I doubt that place would be half empty either, unless the OP went at an odd time.

corydalus wrote:How to make my wife and me walk out of a restaurant for the first time in our lives..
No names..

not posting the name makes this thread pretty useless... one of two things are going to happen.

you'll be seen as a ranter who posts threads of little to no value, or people are going to sit and play "Guess the restaurant" until you tell us.. at which point we'll know anyway and you could have saved a lot of people time by not having to guess the name of some restaurant you're describing as having a cruddy experience at.

Dddane, that's kind of harsh, but you do make a point, which is that trying to conceal the name is now leading people to make guesses which tar innocent restaurants with the complaint. It would be better to just say where this happened.

dddane wrote:not posting the name makes this thread pretty useless

A positive review of El Tinajon is not useless to me.

El Tinajon
2054 W. Roscoe
(773) 525-8455

Best,
Michael

eatchicago wrote:A positive review of El Tinajon is not useless to me.

I totally agree, as I've been curious about that place. Let's say that the original post is about half as useful as it could or should be.

El Tinajon is fabulous.

However, I hate to add fuel to the fire, but I'm VERY curious where this horrible experience took place. I live on Roscoe, and have never had such a deplorable experience in any of my brunch outings, but this still concerns me. I really hope it wasn't Victory's Banner

sweetsalty wrote:I really hope it wasn't Victory's Banner

The very same hope occured to me, which is why it would be all the more useful to know what the place is, so we know it's not Victory's Banner. I'd hate for it to be they, because I got a good vibe from the place the one time I was there.

If the "bitchn" in the OP was indeed a clue, it brings to mind a weird experience we had at Kitschn about a year ago. We showed up for lunch, to be told--nicely, I would add--that because the kitchen couldn't keep up with the number of customers, we could be seated at one of the empty tables, but we would not be permitted to order food for at least a half an hour. Now, I appreciated this information, because it was all we needed to make up our minds to go someplace else. Better they told us than that they didn't. But it did seem very strange--and still does--that a place would have more tables than it can actually take care of. If the maximum the kitchen can feed at any given time is, let's say, twelve tables, then why would you have twenty tables in your restaurant??!? Aren't you just asking for trouble? Why not take some tables away, and then use the extra space to increase the kitchen's capacity, until you find the right balance between the number of customers you can seat and the number of customers you can feed? It kind of seems like Restaurant 101.

I really, highly doubt it was Victory's Banner -- I have been going there consistently for years and, while it may be difficult to get a table sometimes, I have never had anything but impeccable, friendly, cheerful service. Not that I'm saying it isn't possible that VB is who the OP refers to, but I would be very surprised.

Also, the "No names, but we were bitchn about the experience" is kind of a giveaway. My other guess would be the place that rhymes with "Mets."

El Tinajon rocks!

edited w/apologies for speculation- didnt' even think of that.

LTHForum,

Please refrain from any further speculation about the restaurant that is responsible for the bad service outlined in the original post. As Mike said above, we're going down a road that leads to tarnishing the names and reputations of places that may well be innocent in this matter.

Let's accentuate the positive here (El Tinajon) unless/until there are some facts about the negative.

Thank you.

Best,
Michael
for the moderators

Since this has morphed into the "say nice things about El Tinajon thread," I'll oblige. As well as post my first pictures ever.

We went there last week for lunch, tipped off by this thread. The place couldn't have been cuter, the service sweeter.



My take on the Guatemalan experience at El Tinajon? It isn't that the food is night-and-day different from Mexican that distinguishes it, because it isn't. (Sure it's different, but if you wandered in thinking you were in a Mexican place, you wouldn't wander out convinced that you were wrong.) It's that everything is just about the best version of itself (or anything like itself) that you've had. The kind of delicious that leaves you wanting more even though you're full.

We had a couple different kinds of Guatemalan beer with our chips and salsa (how do you do chips and salsa better than anyone else? I don't know, but they do), and were brought (without our asking for it) a chicken vegetable soup that was Ambrosial in an "Oh My God!" kind of way. Like I say, you've had four hundred servings of this soup that were almost exactly the same, in category. You just haven't had any that were this good.



Luckily, the clever waitress intuited (after we were looking at the lunch menus for a while) that what we really wanted to see were the dinner menus. From the Guatemalan side of this, I ordered the Combacion Mixta--a sausage, a tamale, a chile relleno with pork, along with fried plaintains, beans and rice. I wouldn't have minded if the chile had been hotter, but everything was so good that I didn't have time to ruminate on this before it was gone. My friend ordered the same combination. Her remark when she was finished: "If I were alone, I would lick my plate." (I encouraged her to do so anyway, but she demurred.)



For dessert, we shared, three ways thank goodness, a massively good bread pudding that had a touch of brandy or rum or some sort of liqueur going on.



We heart El Tinajon.

Nice pics and post! (So which camera did you settle on?)

It isn't that the food is night-and-day different from Mexican that distinguishes it, because it isn't.

At the risk of offending any Guatemalans present, I tend to think of Guatemalan as basically a regional Mexican cuisine-- it certainly has absorbed more Mexican influence (all to the good, if you ask me) than roughly-neighboring cuisines such as Costa Rican or Salvadoran, in my (Chicago-based) experience. But in the case of El Tinajon, there might be another reason-- I popped in there for lunch a couple of months back and, although I can't remember if I asked them or it was printed somewhere, I got the impression that it had new owners who actually were Mexican. The menu wasn't noticeably changed, so I think it's still as much a Guatemalan restaurant as it was before, but presumably any tendency to make it taste a little like Mexican food will only have gotten stronger.

Mike G wrote:Nice pics and post! (So which camera did you settle on?)

Thanks, Mike. The Canon SD700 IS. (The first pocket-sized Canon with image stabilization.) No regrets.

riddlemay,

Heck of a nice post and great pics. Thanks for adding some good karma to this thread.

Best,
Michael