Tequilas Restaurant and Famous Cupcakes

Tequilas Restaurant

A few days ago I felt like Mexican food, which is not unusual. I truly believe that I could eat Mexican, Chinese and Japanese, along with a bit of American every day that I live. We decided to try a place we had never been so we went to Tequilas Restaurant in Van Nuys. The restaurant, itself, looks like many – brightly colored on the inside and cute. They have outside seating but we sat indoors. Looking at Victory Blvd. isn’t exactly a great outdoor scene.

Tequilas has a very interesting and varied menu as well as a lunch buffet which was in the $8 range. We skipped that and ordered from the menu. One of my favorite Mexican dishes is carnitas. One of my favorite Mexican restaurants is Mexicali where I almost always get the carnitias which is pork that has been roasted in its own juices and just absolutely falls apart. I decided to have that for my lunch. One difference I noticed immediately was that this pork had a lot more fat than Mexicali has which is just about fat free. Actually this doesn’t bother me but I know it does bother some people. It was extremely tender and tasty. It came with refried beans, rice and guacamole. She asked me what kind of tortillas I wanted. I told her corn but she never brought them which was fine with me because I really seldom eat them and it is healthier for me to eat the meat as a dish in itself. The big disappointment was when she came to tell us they were out of guacamole. How can a Mexican restaurant be out of guacamole at lunch time? I love guacamole. When she brought my meal, it had three slices of avocado on the plate. I looked at her questioningly and she said that they just got the avocadoes. So why didn’t she offer to bring the guacamole when it was ready? Her English wasn’t very good so I didn’t bother to ask her. I took my three slices, squashed them up, added some salsa and made my own. The rice, beans and chips were OK.

BK had arroz con pollo or rice with chicken. This was a grilled chicken breast on top of Spanish rice with melted cheese and salsa over it. She loved it. She would go back again and get the same thing. Our service was spotty. The restaurant filled up quite a bit and most people got the buffet. I might like to try that also. Our meals were $10.99 each which, for some reason, I thought was just a little pricey. I guess that is because at Mexicali they have a lunch special where I would have the same food, except I could get black beans which I prefer, slightly less meat but also less fat, and a soda all for $7.99. Tequillas is at 13627 Victory Blvd. They have various specials throughout the week and a Sunday brunch.

Famous Cupcakes

Since we had been going to various cupcake places, we decided to return to the one that BK felt was the best to see if we still felt that was the case. Famous Cupcakes is in a little mini-mall off Laurel Canyon and Riverside between Jack In the Box and Starbucks. On this day we got three different cupcakes – vanilla milk chocolate which was a chocolate cake with white frosting, chocolate coconut which again was a chocolate cake with white frosting covered with coconut, and black tie which was chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. We found all of these to be far better than most we had tried. The cake was moist. The frosting was not terribly sweet and it was thick but not too thick. These cupcakes are certified kosher and are all natural organic. There are 15 varieties of which 10 are available daily. They cost $3.25 each which is a little high but they are delicious. I know my daughter loves Sprinkles and she will be visiting here in about 5 weeks so I think we will then be going there. I would like to see if I think Sprinkles is any better than Famous Cupcakes.