Los Chicos Restaurante Y Cantina (formerly Daquisto’s)

Los Chicos Restaurante Y Cantina (formerly Daquisto’s)

1715 Kenaston Blvd

204-938-2229

http://www.wowhospitality.ca/restaurants/restaurantsmain.html

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Los-Chicos-Restaurante-Y-Cantina/151011614999901?sk=wall

December, 2011

WOW Hospitality has come up with some top-tier restaurants that deliver some of the best food in Winnipeg.  To keep the menus fresh, WOW sometimes shakes things up by changing restaurants while they’re still at the top of their games.  Pasta la Vista disappeared from downtown, and the Kenaston location became Daquisto’s.  Now Daquisto is gone and its place, Los Chicos serves up Mexican food. 

Outside the restaurant, Chicos greets you with the cheesiest looking chap under a pizza dough-like sombrero.  This obnoxious looking dude must be among the worst looking logos in all restaurant-land.  Walking through the door, you see the décor in the restaurant looks equally obnoxious, with bright orange walls trying to feign the adobe style.  The more subdued lounge offers a calmer alternative.

The salsa usually provides a quick glimpse into what you can expect for food.  Unfortunately, Chicos’s salsa comes chunky, but still runny, without much depth.  Fresh herbs make up the largest part of good salsa but this salsa tastes frankly bland.

The refried beans side tastes saltier than most Mexican beans, but other than salt, it lacks seasoning.  Resembling the consistency of coarse mashed potatoes, the beans are moist and gooey.  The huge bottle of hot sauce resembling Tabasco goes a long way to helping out the beans. 

We start with the crazy chicken wings.  Pollo Loco are wings deep fried in a barbecue chipotle sauce.  They’re a bit over-fried, which is not necessarily a bad thing here.  The meats tastes a little dry but the extra frying time gives a crispiness to the skins.  The sweeter barbecue sauce could use a companion side for dipping and a little more chipotle flavour wood make the good sauce a great sauce. 

Chicos offers the usual Canadianised Mexican dishes and the Seafood Enchilada serves as a great example.  It comes with shrimps and scallops in a lobster sauce and shows little Mexican flavour at all.  The weak sauce doesn’t carry very much lobster taste and the meal ends up being a roll with bland seafood and white sauce.  The nicely spiced side of rice provides the only semblance of Tex-Mex and it easily overshadows the taste of the seafood.

The Fish Taco comes with either a crispy or a soft tortilla encasing a mixture of vegetables with breaded, fried fish.  The deep fried fish adds a nice texture to the dish, and the lime dressing complements the entire assortment.  I would like to see a bit more fish in the taco but otherwise, this is a nicely put-together effort.

There’s no shortage of meat in the monstrous Pulled Pork Burrito.  The massive roll comes stuffed with roasted, pulled pork that tastes moist and juicy.  While I preferred the barbecue belt smoked pulled pork over slow roasted pulled pork, Chicos’s zingy barbecue sauce elevates this meal. 

Los Chicos offers a generous amount of food that can be hit or miss.  Usual for WOW restaurants, the service is always attentive, friendly and competent.  Unfortunately, of the three WOW iterations at this location, Chicos is likely the poorest representative.  There’s some good food to be had here but Mexican purists will turn their noses up—only to gaze into the eyes of the ridiculous logo. 

**½ /5

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