Nuevo Leon

LTH,

The Great Neighborhood Restaurant award for Nuevo Leon is long overdue in my opinion. And it's not just because I've probably enjoyed more meals at NL than at any other Chicago restaurant.

I guess what I love most about NL is the fact that the food reminds me a lot of a few of Dallas' best Tex-Mex places. (The nachos would hold their own in big D.) How can you not love a place where with an average check of $5-10, you get a lovely complimentary starter like a cup of chicken soup or a guisado of pork in green chile sauce with a corn tortilla, in addition to some of the freshest and best tortilla chips in town (warm, and fried in pure lard, of course) ? I prefer the roasted chile salsa which I have to ask for (The salsa cruda is automatically placed on your table alongside a cup of jalapenos en escabeche).

NL offers a Mexican breakfast anytime, with my favorite being the Huevos Rancheros. The chilaquilles are acclaimed by many.

Chilaquilles

My personal favorite dish is the Huevos Rancheros ($3.75), which comes with rice, the best refried beans in Chicagoland, and NL's great flour tortillas. My only complaint is that they don't serve butter, just the margarine stuff in a squeeze bottle when you ask for butter. I'm not ashamed to say that I brought my own stick of butter to NL on one occasion.

The Tacos Sabinas, sort of an "al carbon" , along with the chicken fajitas, the Quesadilla Raul appetizer, and the mole enchiladas are among our most frequently ordered dishes.

The Menudo and Caldo de Res are serviceable, but not stellar.

Service is always quick and friendly, despite the often long lines. NL also has a limited amount of free valet parking and is open until midnight, seven days a week.



[Moderator Edit: Moved from GNR board to Eating out in Chicagoaland]

I think you'll be pleased to read this.

I agree that it deserves a GNR

Guess I'm a little late.

[sets up defensive barrier of pots and pans, ducks behind, talks through soup can]

I came in thinking this was an ironic attempt to UN-gnr (dis-GNR?) Nuevo Leon, which I could be behind someday. While the chilaquiles are quite tasty, I haven't had a single other thing I haven't been either slightly disappointed by or outright offended by. Particularly egregious is the carne asada wherever it rears its chewy, old-tasting flank. I've wanted to like their tampiquena and after three tries someone else at the table (usually a young, starving U of C student) eats it for me. I've also been annoyed at the condition of the grimy floors and tables on the last few occasions, and saw someone else mentioned this here (post 8 ):

http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=14704

In this category of basic American-catering Mexican (admittedly with some regional flair in addition to its mainstay generic Tex-Mex items), I'll take Las Pinatas, Taqueria San Jose, or even Taco Veloz. None have the pretty facade (and Las Pinatas may actually be grimier), but to me the food seems made with more pride.

In honor of Evil Ronnie, whose posts and tastes I admire, I'll give the huevos another shot, but I can't see staking a restaurant's full reputation on a couple of breakfast-y items amid a morass of "not stellar" cuisine. Xni-Pec does huevos motulenos brilliantly, but what one admires is the variety and care of what's beyond the standards.

Some of the most damning praise for NL comes from the original GNR nomination:

The moles are not homemade (and not particularly good) and the menu never changes.

That's been my experience. As always, I'll continue to try them once in a while and maintain hope that they won't continue to rest on their Check Please laurels (or their eggs).

One high-level LTH debate has been between those who say, "if it's on the menu it should be great and the kitchen should take it seriously," and those who say "if the joint's focus is great (whether BBQ, beef, Beijing style noodles or norteno Mexican), who cares if the pizza puffs suck. The only reasonable position is the latter, excepting the sorts of ambitious, expensive spots that are not generally the GNR winners.

NL is a Mexican restaurant in one of the most Mexican neighborhoods in America. On any given day you'll see plenty of non-Mexicans, including the odd busload of pasty UofCers. However, you'll more likely see extended Mexican families post-quince or post-communion or post-baptism. It's a community center.

Granted, like some of the big Chinatown places, or Tank, NL is the big, safe bet in Pilsen and thus offers maybe more than they should for the novice gastro-tourist. But there's a lot to like, and the northern-ness of the place is relatively unique in Chicago where, ironically the further north you go in the US, the more "southern" the Mexican becomes. Kind of like Florida, in reverse. For the breakfast alone -- chicharon en salsa verde with eggs, for example -- I love NL.

pizza puffs never suck

MBK wrote:pizza puffs never suck

Maybe you should add pizza puffs to your faves.

One general – applicable to all discussions – comment: I've thought for a long time that the term "Great" is tossed about without much forethought and to my way of thinking a loose application of the description cheapens it.

There was the time when NL was THE "go to" restaurant in Chicago for Mexican food (in both the Mexican community, and for others interested in the cuisine). I'm talking about 38-years ago when I walked into NL for the first time (at the Halsted St./18th St. location). But the food/restaurant landscape's changed considerably over the years and there's an abundance of places that fall into the category of NL.

Northern Mexican food is what's found in many neighborhoods because that's the part of Mexico where the greatest migration (in Chicago) came from, originally. Yes, the other regions of Mexico are becoming more and more represented - particularly Guerrero and Michoacan (reflecting, too, the large migration from those areas). And, yes, NL continues to thrive because of the loyalty of the Mexican community.

Maybe NL does deserve the "Great" designation from LTH - even if it were only for longevity; it's not an easy accomplishment for restaurants to be in operation for so long. And, it is a "neighborhood" place (probably more so now than in years long past).

I don't often get to NL anymore but when I do eat there it's primarily for nostalgic reasons - not because I think the place has food any better than many other Mexican restaurants in the city - I just happen to be in the neighborhood and will be in the mood to stop. I don't recall a meal I'd describe as "bad" or particularly disappointing, though.

Greatness, like “beauty” lies I the eyes of the beholder.

This year, there is a cadre of GNR nominations where there is near universal consensus that everything on the menu is good, and that many dishes are the best of their kind in the city.

Contrast with Nuevo Leon, Klas, and White Palace Grill, and you'll find quotes like (paraphrasing, but feel free to go back and check) "not very good, but," "not even the best of its kind in the city, but," "not everything is great, but." Often, these statements are made as disclaimers in the original post nominating the restaurant.

I have some affection for all three, but out of the three words in Great Neighborhood Restaurant, feel that they are trading much more on Neighborhood than on Great or Restaurant. When I go to Nuevo Leon, I go as both a former "pasty" (thanks for the blanket categorization, Jeff) U of Cer, and as part of the extended Chicago Mexican-American community. I have distant relatives who still hold family events there. But I'm not a gastro-newbie, and I have high expectations from the places I want to dine, and one of them is variety. I don't want to get the same thing every time.

When I see the kind of global praise for a place like Smak-Tak (not even nominated yet since it's so young and new to the board), I am thrilled at the state of dining in Chicago. There are places that do every dish right, and often these days you find them not in neighborhoods with a century of enclave context, but simply in the places they can open a storefront, like Xni-Pec or the Depot. Some of these trade more on Great and Restaurant than on neighborhood.

I think there is room for both kinds of restaurants in the GNRs. I just think NL is sitting a little too pretty behind its variegated facade and don't think it's elitist to challenge them to improve, even if their business model is filling seats and keeping the community content. I think you have to work harder to earn our love than "the menu never changes" and "many things are not that good."

aschie30 wrote:

MBK wrote:pizza puffs never suck

Maybe you should add pizza puffs to your faves.

i was thinking about it

The Great Neighborhood Restaurants Program is designed to recognize Chicagoland restaurants that the LTHForum community considers “great” – in other words, places that provide a food experience that is distinctly “better than the rest.”

From the explanation of what would constituted a GNR.

Santander,

I kid. The UofC jab was in jest for all of the Maroon alumni and faculty here on LTH, yours truly included. I didn't think you were a Mexican food novice, but was conceding that the place has a decent number of clunkers for those who are. Truth be told, I'd much rather dine at Sabas Vega or another carnitas spot most mornings. I agree with the suggestion that NL and others like it might have a place in the pantheon because of longevity and community import, in addition to the food. Maybe there's an opening for a lifetime achievement award like those the Beard guys give to old places that may or may not be running at full throttle these days.

[ducks behind vinyl booth and bumps into Santander]

Nuevo Leon was the first restaurant that I went to after printing out my little pocket-sized GNR list. I brought a couple of friends, confident that we were in for a great LTH-approved meal. Unfortunately, we were very disappointed. Clearly we didn't order any of the board favorites. (I don't even remember at this point what we ordered as it was quite a while ago.) At the time my meal reminded me of the food that I used to eat at Pepe's in my childhood. Safe, not bad, but undistinguished. It was a surprising choice to me for a GNR given all of the great Mexican food in the city but I also had no sentimental attachment to the place or its history. And I didn't get to experience the best that it had to offer.

I learned from this experience that I would have to do some research before going to any GNR place. Not sure if this is good or bad...

comradelaura wrote:
I learned from this experience that I would have to do some research before going to any GNR place. Not sure if this is good or bad...

I don't see how that follows, but has it turned out to be true? Seems like the premise of this thread is that NL and a very few others are outlier GNRs due to inconsistency (across visits and menu items).

Too funny. Was JUST talking to a mexican co-worker of mine about the new upscale mexican restaurants, and the emergence of regional cuisine in the mexican restaurant genre, and he stated, "flat out, no matter what, Nuevo Leon is my favorite Mexican restaurant in Chicagoland." I don't agree with him in the slightest, but I do think that NL holds some kind of sentimental value to a lot of the Mexican population in the Chicagoland area?

While I love and appreciate many of the neo-regional Mexican spots that can be found across the city, they don't diminish the pleasure I take in eating at Nuevo Leon. Different foods for different moods.

=R=

seebee: Amata and I have some Mexican-American friends who also feel that way and the feelings are very strong indeed.

I myself love Nuevo Leon (East, in Pilsen) -- I also love Nuevo Leon (West, in La Villita*) -- but I will say straight out that there is a certain range of core dishes which I order there and I do not deviate from the straight and narrow. It's a place to visit for norteño food and that's their strength. Now to that I must add that I do not find myself craving that style of food all that often in recent years, as my consumption of flesh has declined considerably. But if I want something along the lines of tacos de sabinas, there are no better places to go than NL East and NL West.

And the fact that these places have been around a long, long time and have served as anchors for their respective neighbourhoods and are run by people who in my experience are exceedingly warm and welcoming and they're so beloved by so many... well all that counts for a lot in my book. Incidentally, Casa de Samuel is somewhat similar in these general ways to the NL-restaurants.

I certainly have no 'beef', nor any pork for that matter, with anyone who is not so keen on the food at these places -- and as I said, I stick to a fairly limited set of preparations at them -- but to my mind they're both very deserving of recognition as GNRs, with special emphasis on the N...

Antonius

*Nuevo Leon en La Villita:
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=73158#73158

i had one of the single worst experiences i've EVER had with any restaurant recently with nuevo leon.

i contacted them on monday this week about catering my restaurant's small employee christmas party. i went to their website and consulted their catering menu, which you can view here:

http://www.nuevoleonrestaurant.com/catering.pdf

i wanted to treat my employees (who are all mexican) to a high-quality varied mexican food feast, so i figured that i'd do the "pick three entrees" at $6.25/person. i thought that i could evenly split the entrees so that we could get five different dishes, so i planned on ordering for 15 people. i figured three entrees per person, times 15 people, is 45 portions, so i ordered 9 portions of five different entrees.

or, at least, i tried to order this. when i called, the guy on the phone told me that they were way too busy, and couldn't make the food for us. i told him that it would be for three o'clock, and wouldn't they be able to do it, since that's not a very busy time? he said "maybe", but that i'd have to come by and bring a cash deposit.

when i balked at doing that (we are located downtown and no one drives to work), he said that i could simply fax my order in instead. so i typed it up and faxed it.

when i heard nothing from them, i called back the next day, and they told me that they couldn't deliver it. i again reminded them of the three o' clock time, and the guy told me that he'd "see what he could do" and would have the owner call me.

next day, again, no call. i figure maybe i'm getting the gringo treatment, so i have one of my employees call and she gets pretty much the same story. no guarantee that they'll even make the food for us, and it seems like having them deliver it, as they offer at the bottom of their catering menu, will be impossible.

now it's getting close to the deadline. if this isn't going to happen, we need to make other arrangements. so i have my employee call again, and at least get assurance that the food will be made for us as ordered, and will be ready for us to pick up. they do, in fact, assure us of this, and give us a total.

i send a couple of my employees in a cab. (round trip from downtown to pilsen in traffic, with wait time while one's in the restaurant--$50) and they come back with the food.

but when we unpack it, it's WAY less food than i expected. they gave us only two of the five entrees i ordered. lots of beans and rice, some complimentary chips and guac that i didn't order, but three of the five entrees were simply missing.

when i call the guy to complain, he tells me that my order "didn't make sense" and that if he gave me what i ordered, it would have cost three hundred dollars. apparently, i misunderstood the menu and thought that for $6.25, each person would get a small portion of three different entrees.

i'm still not sure what the menu is supposed to mean or if this guy was just giving me the business. i got quite irate on the phone with him and he started telling me that i shouldn't have had my employees call on my behalf, because if you want to get something done right, you should do it yourself. i asked to speak to an owner or a supervisor, and the guy told me that they weren't there, and that he was very busy and had to go.

no apology. no offer to make things right. nothing.

the food, i hear, was pretty good. i wouldn't know, because i didn't taste any of it. i wanted to make sure there was enough for everyone, which there wasn't. i was really upset because i just wanted to treat my employees to a nice meal and this place let me down.

i plan on following up with a call to the restaurant after christmas when i might be able to speak with an owner or a manager, but i wanted to share this experience with those in here. nuevo leon's food might be good, and they might be some kind of local institution, but their service in this instance was simply terrible. the exact opposite of what hospitality is supposed to be about.

Sorry to hear about your poor experience.
I'm surprised you would be told they were "too busy" to accomodate your order. How much advance notice were they given?

Elakin, thanks for taking the time to provide a detailed account.
Any place that doesn't make an effort to accommodate a reasonable request like this, with plenty of advance notification, seems way too full of itself.
I was planning to make my first trip to Nuevo Leon on Thursday. I'll go with Sol de Mexico instead.

Too bad about their catering screw up. But IMO all is forgiven because of their huevos rancheros with flour tortillas, best breakfast in the city.

when i called, the guy on the phone told me that they were way too busy, and couldn't make the food for us. i told him that it would be for three o'clock, and wouldn't they be able to do it, since that's not a very busy time? he said "maybe", but that i'd have to come by and bring a cash deposit. . . when i heard nothing from them, i called back the next day, and they told me that they couldn't deliver it. i again reminded them of the three o' clock time, and the guy told me that he'd "see what he could do" and would have the owner call me. next day, again, no call. i figure maybe i'm getting the gringo treatment, so i have one of my employees call and she gets pretty much the same story. no guarantee that they'll even make the food for us, and it seems like having them deliver it, as they offer at the bottom of their catering menu, will be impossible. now it's getting close to the deadline.

Sorry to hear about your experience, and certainly NL should deliver on what they advertise. But in this case, it sounds like alarm bells were ringing pretty loudly pretty early in the game (altho I realize that once you decide to turn down a dark road, it's sometimes tough to turn back). Anyway, thanks for the post, and I'll certainly keep it in mind that catering is not one of NL's strengths.

You made a huge mistake ordering from the restaurant, given the replay you've given us. You're in the food business and should have read the signs more clearly. Your choice, and a big mistake. Nuevo Leon isn't a 'great restaurant' nor does it offer 'great Mexican food". IMO. Bom Bon or Dino's Catering(which we use in our office) will be better choices in the future.

I think experience (as in, life experience) is a big factor here. If you've never had a bad experience with people failing to follow through as you wish them to, you may not be as sensitive to the early warning sounds. But once you've lived a certain amount of time, you're sure to have had enough experience to teach you how to listen for them. Had it been I on the phone instead of you, elakin, that very first conversation would have rung alarm bells so loud as to be deafening. The good news is that as a result of this incident you now have experience hearing the music of "not gonna happen," not just the words, and will be more alert to the sound of that music when you hear it from others. Better yet, you gained this experience in a relatively painless way. For ensuring a happier future, it may be one of the best Christmas presents you get this year.

elakin wrote:when i called, the guy on the phone told me that they were way too busy, and couldn't make the food for us. i told him that it would be for three o'clock, and wouldn't they be able to do it, since that's not a very busy time? he said "maybe", but that i'd have to come by and bring a cash deposit.

riddlemay wrote:I think experience (as in, life experience) is a big factor here. If you've never had a bad experience with people failing to follow through as you wish them to, you may not be as sensitive to the early warning sounds.

I couldn't agree more. If something is important to me and the person who I asked to execute it first said "no" then was persuaded to say "maybe", I'd turn tail and run. Yes, Nuevo Leon failed miserably, but they failed at something that they said they couldn't do in the first place.

And then you just have one of those meals that erases grudges.

My wife is teaching summer school near Chinatown, and we decided to meet for lunch Thursday. Having been to the Lao group, Spring World, and LTH recently, we decided on Pilsen, and I steered us to a reboot at Nuevo Leon, which has sorely disappointed me the last few times (all in 2006 or prior, perhaps one visit was in early '07). Parking was surprisingly easy, Bombon sparkled across the street, and we were in a pretty good mood. On entering NL, my heart sank: air conditioning was out, the line was back to the door, plates and waitresses were flying everywhere, and it just looked like one of those days where the kitchen wouldn't be giving each dish its requisite TLC. I almost turned us around, since I didn't want to disappoint my bride on her first Nuevo Leon visit (or rather, bring her on to my own cynicism). But turnover was fast, the line dissipated quickly, they had fans on in the front by the windows, and after a second moment of doubt following a basket of very, very burnt chips, I was glad we stayed, because:

- amuse was a handmade tortilla wrapped around beef picadillo and potatoes that tasted like they had been simmering in the most complex carne en su jugo possible for hours, the whole enchilada ladled with broth and a dollop of crema

- tamales were moist, piping hot, and richly porky with some nice fresh jalapeno bite

- chilaquiles ($3.95 a plate, and they forgot to upcharge us for the additional requested house-cured chorizo) were little hills of heaven

- beans were lardier and more decadent than ever

- tortillas were almost like huaraches or pupusas in thickness, toastiness, and buttery-ness. Hands down the best I've had since Puerto Vallarta.

Other than the heat and the chips, the only additional spot was the guacamole, which was simply over-whipped avocado, with no onion, cilantro, lime, or even salt. I'm not sure if this is their usual preparation since we've never had it before, but it was extremely boring, and at $7, our most expensive plate.

Once again, we had food that lasted two (very busy packing-up-house) days for under $25 with some damn good horchata, thanks to LTH. If I stick to the small plates here, I think I've figured out how to not only be not disappointed (apologies for that clause construction), but how to be happy enough for more frequent return visits.

I too, was disappointed with the guac until I ordered "guacamole mexicano "which has all of the flavor components you mentioned. Next time try that one and enjoy

I too, was disappointed with the guac until I ordered "guacamole mexicano "which has all of the flavor components you mentioned.

It's a shame that in Pilsen you have to order your guacamole a 'mexicano' in order to get guac the way it's supposed to be made.

Actually, the guac is the only thing that's left me disappointed at NL. I couldn't believe how boring it was. While it's good to know that I can get it with the usual add-ins, I think I'll stick to making guac at home and enjoy the many tasty dishes at NL that I have no clue how to make.

I'm lucky to have a hubby who will on occasion rescue me from my job in the Loop and take me for a delightful lunch at NL. It's a bit like going on vacation to Mexico in the middle of the work week! A real treat.

Consider me a huge fan of the guisado and the tacos sabinas. Oh, and the salsa verde, which you usually have to request.