We spent a Sunday evening in Decorah, IA a few weeks ago on a trip to NE Iowa to check out the fall foliage. We'd had lunch at Mabe's Pizza earlier in the day (click here to see the Road Tips entry on Mabe's), and we had planned on eating at Rubaiyat that evening. (Click here to see the Road Tips entry on Rubaiyat.) Well, we found out that Rubaiyat - as wall as the bulk of restaurants in the Decorah area - were closed on Sunday nights. Options were slim for dinner, but we had noticed a Mexican restaurant on previous visits to Decorah and this time the place had set up patio seating in their parking lot for outdoor dining. Figuring that we needed to cut our losses since really nothing else was open, we ended up going to Don Jose Mexican Restaurant in downtown Decorah.
Martin Pena opened Don Jose a little over 10 years ago and along with his family has built the business into the "go-to" place for Mexican food in Decorah. Don Jose features a full slate of traditional Mexican food specialties and a full bar offering margaritas, imported Mexican beers, wine and non-alcoholic drinks.
It was an unseasonably beautiful evening that night in Decorah. We parked catty-cornered from Don Jose located at the corner of E. Water and State streets in the downtown area. (see map) Since they were only offering outdoor seating at the restaurant, there was a bit of a wait. We were greeted by a young man who turned out to be Martin Pena, Jr. who told us there would be about a 10 to 15 minute wait for a table.
I did go inside to use the restroom while we were waiting for a table. It appeared that the restaurant was nice and cozy, well-lit and somewhat colorful. High-backed padded booths were through the dining area, all of which were taped-off due to pandemic restrictions the restaurant had in place. Mexican artwork told some of the sterility out of the atmosphere in the place.
True to his word, Martin Pena, Jr. sat us at a meshed-metal table with matching chairs less than 15 minutes after we checked in. He dropped off a couple of menus for us and it wasn't long before his father, owner Martin Pena, came over to greet us and drop off some chips and salsa at the table. He was a short, stout man with a friendly demeanor. He asked us what we would like to drink and I got one of their Cadillac margaritas - Jose Cuervo and Grand Marnier in a house mix. My wife - sort of surprisingly to me - ordered a tequila sunrise. It was made with a house tequila, blackberry liquor, orange juice and grenadine. It was surprising to me because I can't remember the last time - if ever - that she ordered a tequila sunrise. She said she wanted a change-up and she was happy she got it.
Don Jose Mexican Restaurant features a little bit of everything in terms of Mexican food. You'll find the typical Mexican appetizers and staples of Mexican foods on the menu - enchiladas, burritos, tacos and chimichangas. Beef, chicken, pork and seafood items were available in many of the specialties they offered. Some of the more interesting items on the menu included a shrimp dish with a parmesan cream sauce, crab-stuffed enchiladas, chicken molé enchiladas, and Tacos Adobo - chopped pork marinated in an adobo sauce served in soft corn tortillas and topped with a red sauce. There were a lot of good things to choose from on the menu.
We had ordered our food and passed the time eating some of their very good chips with the house-made salsa. It had grown colder after the sun went down and they had to turn on the outdoor heating lamps they had in the patio area. We'd gone through a basket of chips and it seemed to take a little longer than we figured for our food to show up after we had ordered. We had finished our drinks and I tracked down Martin to order a Sol beer to have with my dinner. He came back with the beer and apologized for the delay in the food. "We have a lot of to-go orders," he explained. There certainly were a steady stream of people coming to pick up food to-go. After about 20 minutes, our food showed up at the table.
My wife ended up going with the Pollo Don Jose - sautéed chicken breast strips mixed with rice and topped with a white queso sauce. She wasn't all that hungry, but the portion was huge. She said there was going to be no way she could even eat half of what she had on her plate.
I thought long and hard about getting the steak fajitas as someone at a table near us had that brought to them for their dinner. But I ended up getting the chile pork verde - chunks of pork in a green tomatillo sauce and served with refried beans and Mexican rice. Flour tacos came on the side. And for good measure - and I don't know why looking back - I ended up getting a beef taco just to try.
My chile pork verde was interesting in taste. It tasted like one of the main spices was all-spice, something that I found somewhat enjoyable. The pork was tender and easy to cut with a fork. I made a couple tacos out of the chile pork verde and added rice and beans. It was good - not great - but good.
I had a couple bites of the beef taco and it was pretty undistinguished. It was bland and basic - a typical Americanized taco, if you will.
My wife thought her chicken and rice dish was also just "OK". She made a taco out of it and added some salsa to it. She sort of shrugged her shoulders and said, "Ah, it's all right." That's one of the problems we've found when we've had Mexican food in smaller towns in our journeys. We're so used to some of the good to very good Mexican restaurants we have in the Quad Cities and it's tough to find ones that are on par with those places in small towns like Decorah, IA.
Nonetheless, the food was good enough for what we wanted that evening at Don Jose Mexican Restaurant. It certainly wasn't finer dining that we had hoped for at Rubiyat, but it was better than just getting sandwiches or greasy appetizers at T. Bock's down the street. Martin's service was very good - after all, he is the owner. And it was sort of nice to be able to eat outside one last time for the year. (A cold front with rain came through overnight and it was probably the last night Don Jose would be offering outdoor seating.) Our options were pretty limited with Sunday night dining in Decorah and Don Jose Mexican Restaurant turned out to be an OK - not a great, but OK - choice for us.
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