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Sunday, March 21, 2010

Pancheros

Downtown Iowa City location
December 2007
Most Panchero’s locations I’ve been in are very colorful places, with attractive floor tiles and colorful artwork of abstract peppers and things on the walls. While the downtown location has the artwork, the floor is a drab off-white tile. But the uniqueness of this small restaurant makes up for the uninteresting floor. There aren’t as many places to sit, and sometimes you are pretty close to your fellow eaters, but there is an upstairs area that is unique, and almost exciting to eat at! After accending up the stairs, there are a couple of tables with 3 chairs at them, up against the wall. If you turn and continue going up, there are 2 booths to sit at. From these, you can look down into the downstairs eating area, or enjoy the color of the pipes against the color of the walls.
Unfortuantly, even with the special ambiance of the upstairs of downtown’s Panchero’s, you’ll find less Cholula bottles. My guess is that it has something to do with being near campus, some students are testing the 5 finger discount. To those students: the rest of us really appreciate restaurants like Panchero’s serving quality hot sauce like Cholula, and we would like there to be plenty for us when we go there. If you need to steal something, try jelly packets at the diner.
I usually get the burrito with ½ chicken and ½ veggie for about $6. If you say chicken and veggie, they’ll give you twice as much and charge you extra. But if you say half & half, that’s what you get for the same price. However, this doesn’t work on quesadillas. I tried, and it was explained to me that they put 1 scoop of each on these and can’t do half.
The tortillas are pressed fresh on their “Dough Pro” and they taste great.
Their chips come in their own bags and are a pretty good deal for 50 cents.
Environmentally: They use recycled napkins. If you get the food to stay, they put it on reusable plates. The only throw away items are the plastic forks and salsa containers.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the review! The downtown Iowa City location is actually our very first location. Glad to hear you are a fan of the fresh tortillas and all our other options! The cholula bottles do become a problem at times. We also offer our options of Fuego and Verde hot sauce as well.
    Thanks again for your support and the great review!

    Reid
    @pancheros

    ReplyDelete