#2 of 88: Marisa’s (Downey)

Fun City Fact: (Incor­po­rated in 1956 – Home to the first Taco Bell in 1962, and home to the 4th built McDonald’s and old­est sur­viv­ing Mickey D’s today)

After vis­it­ing my best friends Ali­cia and Alex and their new baby Isabel in Downey, we chose Marisa’s for lunch. Marisa’s is a local restau­rant, with a sec­ond loca­tion in La Mirada, that has been fam­ily owned and oper­ated since 1975.

A lit­tle back-story on cui­sine first: I have always had a han­ker­ing for qual­ity, tra­di­tional Mex­i­can food. I spent a lot of time dur­ing my early years at my neigh­bor Lorena’s house. We saw each other most every day and I became the token white girl at many fam­ily gath­er­ings and hol­i­days. Look­ing back, I wished I had learned more about the food and cul­ture, but at least those times helped me appre­ci­ate tra­di­tional Mex­i­can foods and fla­vors today. (Lorena, if you ever hap­pen upon this, I miss you!)

One of my favorite Mex­i­can dishes is as sim­ple as it gets: cheese enchi­ladas. Some­thing about warm corn tor­tillas filled with hot oozy-cheesy-goodness and topped with home­made red sauce – then (hope­fully!) broiled for just a minute at the end to form a bub­bly brown extra-melty-cheesy top that hon­estly makes me want to hug every­one. Oh my god these are good when cooked to per­fec­tion, which unfor­tu­nately is rare. I can’t pin­point exactly where this obses­sion started, as I have had a LOT of Mex­i­can food in my day (though Lorena’s house is a safe bet) but I feel like I am for­ever search­ing to recre­ate it. Because of this, I always order a side of cheese enchi­ladas at each new Mex­i­can restau­rant we try… Ok, on to the review….

The best part about Marisa’s is the salsa bar. Both the medium and hot green sal­sas were spicy and authen­tic yet dif­fer­ent than I have had before. The chips are the size of full corn tor­tillas that you break apart to dip into the salsa – a unique twist on tor­tilla chips. I ordered the combo #1, a cheese enchi­lada (of course) and a ground beef taco with beans and rice. Not sure why I ordered the gringo taco but hey, it sounded good at the time. Mike got his go-to meat dish – car­ni­tas… this time in a tostada. The car­ni­tas were extremely dry and chewy. The let­tuce, sour cream, toma­toes and extras on the huge tostada did noth­ing to improve the taste of the dish. Cheese enchi­lada? Aver­age. Noth­ing wrong with it, but noth­ing spe­cial and still not any­where close to the vision of per­fec­tion I have in my head of this cheesy beast. Ground beef taco was pretty good. It had a medium heat red salsa thinly driz­zled over the top of the cheese and the shell was hard and crispy, just how I like it. Rice and beans were…. well… rice and beans.

Over­all we were dis­ap­pointed by the food – or at least not wowed by it. Next to that, the ambiance wasn’t what we expected either. The walls were lit­tered with beer posters, and adver­tis­ing, which felt like it took away from the authen­tic­ity of the cui­sine. While it didn’t com­pletely look like a sports bar it had a lit­tle of that feel to it. The ser­vice was quick and nice enough.

While it wasn’t a ter­ri­ble expe­ri­ence by any means, it just isn’t a restau­rant we would go to again. When I have Mex­i­can food I really expect it to be some­what authen­tic, both food and atmos­phere, but unfor­tu­nately Marisa’s didn’t have this feel to it at all.

The Great Cheese Enchi­lada quest continues!