I just love authentic Mexican food. We have a large Mexican population in the Quad Cities and finding a good Mexican restaurant with REAL Mexican food is a real treat. Some of the more established Mexican food places in the Quad's are getting to be either too predictable, or the quality of their food has gone down hill as they've expanded or grown their business. On the advice of a friend, Santo Pullela, with whom I worked with on River Roots Live in the past, Cindy and I went to La Rancherita over in Rock Island one evening.
La Rancherita is located on 14th Ave in Rock Island, just south of Augustana College and near the border with Moline (see map). In fact, 16th Ave in Moline becomes 14th Ave. in Rock Island. It's a little confusing when you come through Moline to get to La Rancherita. It's housed in a building that - I was told - was formerly a neighborhood grocery store a number of years ago. Parking is mainly street parking, but there are a couple lots across the street that appear to be attached to vacant buildings.
La Rancherita is owned by five brothers - Roberto, Carlos, Jeronimo, Everando and Salvador Villalobos, and helped out by their nephew, Jose Arias, Jr. The family is originally from San Jose de Gracia, Mexico, a small village just south of Guadalajara in west central Mexico. They moved to the Chicago area about 13 years ago and ended up in Rock Island over five years ago. The recipes they use at La Rancherita are family recipes that have been passed along over the years.
Cindy and I got in there around 6:30 one evening earlier this summer and took a booth up toward the front of the restaurant. We were given chips, salsa and homemade pico de gallo, and I ordered up a Sol beer, while Cindy got a Negra Modelo. The menus were on the table and the description of the food was exactly what I was looking for. Real pork tacos al pastor, shredded beef enchiladas, real homemade pork or chicken tamales, menudo soup - I was already in a mental tizzy just trying to figure out what to get.
La Rancerita has a number of dinner combinations, or you can order ala carte. That's exactly what I did. I knew the tacos were pretty small, so I got two pork tacos al pastor with corn tortillas, a beef enchilada and a pork tamale. Cindy got the burrito combination with refried beans and rice. She also got a chicken tamale.
Our waitress was pleasant and very thorough, checking on our chip basket, salsa and beers on a regular basis. Their hot sauce salsa was very good and I was getting a slow burn from eating the chips with the salsa. I think I went through three Sol's before we got our food.
And it wasn't all that long - less than 10 minutes - after we ordered our food when it came to our table. The pork tacos were great. I love the small (5 inch) corn tortillas when eating a taco. Two tortillas per taco (sometimes three in some places I've been) is the norm in authentic Mexican places. I really liked the enchilada and the pork tamale was a little dry, but really tasted good with a generous slather of salsa on top.
Cindy, on the other hand, wasn't quite as enamored with her dinner as I was. She declared her burrito as "OK", but she did like the chicken tamale.
We noticed a lot of families coming and going from La Rancherita while we were there. The table turnover was rather quick at the restaurant, which is very good if you own the place. There were also a number of people who got food to go. La Rancherita also offers a kid's menu and they also have an extensive breakfast menu with authentic Mexican egg and chorizo dishes. Cindy did want to come back sometime for breakfast.
With tip (La Rancherita doesn't take credit cards - cash only), our bill came to about $35 bucks -$17.50 of that was our bar tab - so our food was relatively cheap. And I thought it was delicious. Cindy wasn't quite sold on the food, but I thought it was wonderful. We've got La Rancherita programmed in on the GPS so we'll have no problem finding it the next time we go.
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