Note: If you can’t eat it all, the leftovers reheat beautifully after a mere few seconds in a microwave.įajitas have never been something I lean toward (too much sizzle, not enough steak), but my stepson loved the top sirloin fajitas ($13.95) at Red Iguana 2. More pedestrian - but just as habit-forming - is the chile con queso starter ($6.25) at Red Iguana, spiked through and through with fiery jalapeños. Simply put, you could travel far and wide and never find a more satisfying dish than Red Iguana’s red pipian mole. Tender pieces of boneless chicken are bathed in that luscious mole, and refried beans and Mexican rice are served on the side, along with warm tortillas (your choice of flour or corn) for soaking up the delicious sauce. It’s a subtle, slightly sweet and spicy, complex mole made with pumpkin seeds, peanuts, sunflowers seeds, guajillo chiles, onions and tomatoes.
But I’ve never tasted mole better than this. Now, I’ve eaten a lot of mole in Oaxaca, Mexico, which is to mole as Japan is to sushi. So, I often find myself defaulting to a handful of longtime favorites: the chile Colorado ($10.95) with tender stewed chunks of top sirloin in a cinnamon-scented sauce with New Mexico chiles the signature pork loin cochinita pibil ($12.85) the completely addictive chile verde ($10.95) and the moles - all of the moles at Red Iguanas are winners.ĭuring a recent visit to Red Iguana 2, I tried the red pipian mole ($15.95) and was knocked out. My quick tabulation found some 90 different dishes listed-and many of those, such as combo plates, have numerous variations- and that doesn’t even include side dishes or desserts. As I mentioned, I find the Red Iguana menus daunting. Red Iguana Mexican Restaurants: Masters of Mole At Red Iguana, you don’t feel like you’re eating in a culinary shrine it feels a lot more like eating at home. But, maybe that’s exactly the attraction. No one pumped a million bucks into high falutin’ design. Maybe the Red Iguana décor is an attraction, but I doubt it. If I could open a restaurant, I’d want to hire 10 Omars to work in it. And yet, while efficiency is critical with the sort of crowds Red Iguana attracts, I’ve never felt rushed there - even with 20 or 30 folks in waiting, all lusting after my table.
#Red iguana machacha tostadas recipe professional#
The staff at the Red Iguana restaurants - from owner Lucy Cardenas to waiters and waitresses like Omar, Sara and Michael - are simultaneously friendly, professional and efficient. Both ended their correspondence with nearly identical suggestions for the offending restaurants: “They should hire some servers from the Red Iguana.” Just last week I received two e-mails from different City Weekly readers complaining about lousy service they’d received at other restaurants in town. So I ask, what is it about Red Iguana that makes it so damned popular? And indeed, there is a third Red Iguana slated to open in the City Creek Center food court in March. I’m convinced that if the Cardenas family-owners of the Red Iguanas - built a half-dozen additional Red Iguana restaurants, they’d still be mobbed.
On a Monday and a Wednesday, there were 45-minute delays for dinner seating. on a recent Friday, there was a half-hour wait to be seated for lunch at the new Red Iguana 2.
However, the opening of Red Iguana 2 seems to have awakened dormant Red Iguana lovers, like myself, who too-rarely visited the restaurant because of those aforementioned wait times. The idea, in part, was to take some of the pressure off of the original Red Iguana and, in theory, help diffuse the lengthy table waits. So, a second Red Iguana should at least help alleviate the first problem, right? Well, not so fast, bucko.Ī second Red Iguana, Red Iguana 2, opened last month. The restaurant was too small and the menu was too big.
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