La Veracruzana (Northampton, MA and Amherst, MA)

With two locations in western Massachusetts, La Veracruzana serves up a mix of fairly standard American style Mexican food and some dishes more specific to the owners' native state of Veracruz, from which the restaurants derive their name.  The primary and original location is on Main St. in Northampton, conveniently right next to my favorite spot in the city, The Dirty Truth, while the second is in downtown Amherst on South Pleasant St.  As a kid, going to the Northampton location was a fun treat, and in college (and after) the Amherst location has provided me with a fix for occasional cravings for enchiladas, tamales, or chiles rellenos.

La Veracruzana is best known for its salsa bar, where over a half dozen homemade salsas are available to serve yourself.  From mild to burning hot, tomatillo to borracha, the options are plentiful and delicious, enough to make anyone happy and accompany any dish they serve.  Chips are available--a change from when the restaurant opened-- and are a great way to try the salsas, but they are expensive at $3 a serving, though they are fresh made; no Tostitos here. 

The menu is written on large blackboards at both locations, and is rather varied; you can get anything from a quesadilla to pupusas, the delicious Salvadoran stuffed masa cakes.  I love their mole, that most spectacular of sauces, slightly sweet with chocolate, slightly spicy, and just overall so delectable that it improves anything and everything it touches; served on their enchiladas con pollo (chicken) it

Enchiladas con pollo y mole

is absolute perfection.  Tender, flavorful chicken wrapped in corn tortillas, topped with melted cheese and a sauce (mole, a slightly spicy red "enchilada sauce," or a tomatillo sauce), and served with refried beans and rice.  The rice and beans are fine, though they do not stack up with the addictively spectacular varieties at Tacos Lupita in Lynn, MA.  The beans are pretty standard, like you would get just about anywhere, but the rice is actually pretty good; I tend to mix them together with some salsa, and it tastes just fine.

Horchata

Along with the enchiladas I had horchata, my favorite Central American drink, rice based and sweet without ever being cloying.  They also serve really great lemonade, a variety of aguas frescas, and during the winter, Mexican hot chocolate.  Their flan is supposedly good if you are in the mood for dessert, though I have not had it and I only know one person who has, though he enjoyed it.

All in all, La Veracruzana is an old favorite making solid if mostly unspectacular food; there are a few things on the menu that you may not recognize, and if your exposure to Mexican food is Taco Bell, you probably will be pretty shocked by what comes out.  As far as Mexican/Central American restaurants in the area, it is about as good as you will get, except possibly Mi Tierra, a Salvadoran owned eatery in neighboring Hadley.

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Tacos Lupita (Lynn, MA)

Tacos Combo platter

On occasion, in the course of doing my job, I am required to attend trainings, and since I actually tend to enjoy these breaks from normal work (and the overtime pay that accompanies them) I volunteer to take many of them, oftentimes in places that I wouldn't ordinarily go.  On Wednesday, I did just that, going to Lynn, MA, where I have never been and thus knew nothing about the local food scene.  Taking advantage of a widespread membership of an unrelated forum I am a member of, I solicited suggestions, and ended up at the fantastic, authentic, Tacos Lupita at 129 Munroe St.  A short walk from my training, I, of course, made it longer by taking a wrong turn, walking about a mile the wrong way, and then walking back when my backup plan (formulated when I realized I had gone the wrong way), The Earl of Sandwich, turned out to be closed.  I am so glad it was.  No matter how good the sandwiches there are (or were; it may only have been closed because I was there at about 11:20am, but it did look closed for good), they could not have compared to Tacos Lupita.

A little hole in the wall at the corner of Washington St and Munroe St, Tacos Lupita was already starting to fill up when I arrived around 11:45, and is clearly a very, very popular lunch joint.  Offering a variety of Central American foods (Mexican and Salvadoran) from pupusas to tacos to the USA pleasing burritos, this is a great option if you are in or around Lynn.  In fact, I would brave the absolute crime ridden crap hole that is most of Lynn (sorry, but it's true) just to eat these tacos. 

I ordered the taco combo meal, which offers three tacos and a side of rice and beans.  I went with each of the three main meat options (pollo/chicken, al pastor/roast pork, and carne de res/beef), and they were each fantastic.  Served with a large wedge of lime and a cup of salsa verde, these rivaled the tacos I ate in my trip to Mexico as a kid, and the rice and beans were legitimately addictive.  I started with the chicken, which was delicious, a strong flavor as if grilled over charcoal instead of simply done on a flattop, and the slightly spicy salsa verde played nicely with the fresh salsa in the taco and the acid of the lime juice I squeezed over it.  The pork, crispy and delicious, was even better, still juicy, and it also benefitted nicely from the acidic lime juice.  Lastly, the beef taco, which like the the chicken was small chunks of flattop grilled meat, was really great, with just the right amount of crust on the meat, but also managing to remain juicy, just like the pork.  Accompanying these were the aforementioned rice and beans, which were a lot different from the standard you would find in a Tex-Mex restaurant.  The beans were slightly citrusy tasting, soft but not entirely falling apart, and the rice had just a hint of saffron flavor that drove me to eat every last bite of it even when my stomach was screaming for me to just stop shoveling food into my mouth.  For a drink, I had an horchata, a traditional Salvadoran (and Spanish, Guatemalan, Mexican, etc etc etc) drink made from, in the Salvadoran case, morro seeds.  I'm not sure if this was actually morro or rice, but it was a little different than I've ever had it before (always made with rice); it was good, but not my favorite that I've had.  That said, I'm not a big fan of most aguas frescas, so this was my best option if I didn't want a Coke or other soft drink.

All in all, this was a really great lunch, which totaled $10.70 after tax, and I was beyond stuffed; by the time I ate dinner at a little after 8:00pm, I only just starting to get very hungry again.  I think vegetarians would be fine here, but I can't guarantee that as I wasn't paying that much attention to the other options on the board.

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