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Dos Rios Restaurant - Ann001 - 03-15-2019
Anybody living in this hood have some restaurant recommendations? I always walk through the tunnel to my old faves, but would like to find some on this side of the tunnel as well.....
RE: Dos Rios Restaurant - jesm - 03-15-2019
We always enjoy El Asuente right at the glorieta. Good seafood dishes shrimp salad is a personal fave.
RE: Dos Rios Restaurant - Ann001 - 03-15-2019
Thanks! I'll stop in this weekend....
RE: Dos Rios Restaurant - DonJuane - 03-16-2019
I've found su cocina is the best restaurant in town. Much cheaper and better! This is true especially after too many years of tacos and tortas and if you are like me and sometimes are going crazy for some memorable US style food.
If your primary desired entree is meat-oriented then save up for some Prime US beef from Costco (I've recently found it in Leon, Celia and Queretaro). If it's fish, then the main city market in Queretaro, there is an excellent vendor (will have to revert to my notes) that has sashimi-grade offerings. Second stop in Queretaro is City Market Antea. Both are worth the periodic drive or bus ticket. Honorable mention is HEB in Leon and they also have Stubbs BBQ sauce and Shiner Bock beer, plus a few other Austin favorites ;-)
Still, a good bargain if cooking is "off the table" is the Delica Mitsu and it would take days to prepare in your kitchen what they offer up each day at a very reasonable price. Also up for mention is the new restaurant that sells Pho (can't recall the name at the moment) but while it's a welcome change from what's generally been available here, they fail to do the true Vietnamese 12 hour cooking of the bone marrow to create the aromatic soup base as well as leave a few markers off that natural Pho flavor that is normally expected such as star anise. They also opt for chunks of beef over paper thin sliced but perhaps they are cutting the meat themselves and don't have a slicer.
If your palate is not that refined and you want something just to give you nourishment with hopefully not too much heart-burn, then there are a number of small restaurants up and down the backroads near downtown with "menu del dia" and in this case they prepare the meals for less than you can if you consider your time invested in the equation. These places are hard to beat for long-time affordable living in Mexico but that's if you have forgotten what it's like to be spoiled with the kind of food we often find in the US. And it's all relative to what each of us calls sustainable levels of living and what is not. For example, I am a bad one to be too demanding of quality but once you've tasted better and know that you can cook it from local ingredients with just a little bit of labor added (what else are we going to be doing other than maybe laundry anyway) you, like me, may see that adding the extra time to prepare a meal and one we really enjoy makes it hard not to just do the work ourselves and that's even if the price of an alternative seems reasonable and the food palatable.
Otherwise, the rising cost you will be out (here or anywhere) to obtain a "gourmet meal" will soon deplete the most abundant of budgets. Of course you can also easily go over that while cooking at home, so keep this in mind and perhaps add to the dish size while keeping in mind some way to properly manage leftovers. Try to select items that freeze and thaw out easily and without too much destruction of the texture, as this method can help you improve the economies of scale when you want to invest the time for the robust flavor of a home cooked meal but can't afford the time repeatedly to create each a serving. Things I prepare for freezing (by sectioning off individual packets of servings and freezing independantly) are dishes like a big pot of pasta, pozole, roast, TX cook-off style chili, grilled meats, soups, stews, etc. Cassaroles also freeze and re-serve well if you have the space and don't keep them in the freezer too long.
RE: Dos Rios Restaurant - DonJuane - 03-16-2019
P.S. The big-pot and refreezing process I have been doing now for many years. I use either ziplocks or better. some type of reusable container for each serving. I also use an ultra small scale fountain pump to speed the process ($5 eBay). I can begin as late as early afternoon and have the large pot cooled, sectioned off and placed in the freezer in a reasonable amount of time. Before I started this method, I'd often have to let the large pot cool overnight and then freeze it but I found over time that the additional cool-time was partially destroying the flavor. What I do now is cook a large dish, such as 10-12 lbs of Texas style cook-off chili or some of my own Pozole Rojo and then I serve a single serving for the current meal time. Then I place the giant pot into a bath of cold water with the small fountain pump submerged and tilted sideways to circulate and in a matter of only an hour or two, the once boiling pot has cooled to the point of being room temperature and is ready to split into freezing containers and place in the freezer without being hot and causing the original contents to begin the thawing process.
After all, this process is the same thing you are experiencing at Olive Garden and other US "chain" restaurants, the only difference is that you don't have Wall Street to keep happy and can make your dishes in the most robust artistic manner you desire, adding top quality ingredients and spices, concentrating on flavor and quality rather than on the "bottom line". Good luck!
RE: Dos Rios Restaurant - Ann001 - 03-16-2019
I seem to have become extremely lazy with cooking since I've been here! I got tired just reading about all your shopping/prep, DonJuane. My main concern is not gourmet (although I appreciate it, I am definitely on a budget) and so cleanliness is what I most care about. If it tastes reasonably good and I don't get sick--it's a keeper. (Having recently had food poisoning, I have no desire to repeat that experience)
RE: Dos Rios Restaurant - roberb7 - 03-17-2019
Had lunch at Mariscos El Asuente about a month ago. It's a little pricey, but OK.
RE: Dos Rios Restaurant - DonJuane - 03-17-2019
As far as seafood goes, if you are willing to expand your scope a bit outside the city, this place is perhaps my favorite for quality and affordability:
https://goo.gl/maps/CHJ9od8rxQQ2