Dos Banditos Restaurant Reviews : Hunter's paradise buffet at El Cazador - By N.L. Belardes, Willieboy and guest Matt Munoz

Willieboy Bandito:

Before I do my stupid little review of El Cazadores Restaurant, I want to pontificate on Mexican Restaurant names. Almost anything spoken in Spanish sounds sexy to me, or cool. Take the restaurant El Sombrero; makes me think "old Mexico", you know, really authentic. If I named my restaurant El Sombrero, you'd be visiting "The Hat Restaurant". Doesn't exactly make your mouth water, right? The Crazy Chicken sounds sort of stupid too (El Pollo Loco), or Que Pasa (What's Happening) ...where's Rerun? How about, Tacos El Gordo? The Fat Person Taco. Yum.



So part of my quest today was to discover what a Cazadores is? I know it's a tequila. In fact, one of my favorites. So I asked our camarera (waitress), in my broken Spanish, what it meant (I like to bust out my Spanish and make an ass out of myself whenever the chance pops up). Remarkably, she understood my question and she replied it was a hunter. So, in my mind, there are several possible ways the name for this restaurant came about:

1. The dudes that own the restaurant like to hunt and "El Amigos" was taken.
2. They liked the American restaurant "Hungry Hunter" so much that they...
3. The dudes were drinking tequila and trying to think up a name; at some point the name on the bottle got them to thinking...

I'm guessing #3

OK, let's move on to the review. We sat down and fresh, warm, seasoned chips came out with a tasty salsa. I went easy on the chips because I knew a buffet was on the menu for today. Mexican food is well suited for buffet. But that doesn't make them all equal.



I'll be up front and admit I'm not very adventurous. Here's the stuff I dished up. I loaded up on the mini cheese enchiladas, rice with a big scoop of chili verde, chicken fajitas, and some "guilt" veggies that I had no intention of eating. I'm a buffet technician. I size up the big ticket items and just get that.



Yeah, I like beans—but I like fajitas a whole bunch more. And when I order fajitas at a typical restaurant you get such a disappointing amount of meat. Salad? Why? Macaroni salad? Only if I'm at KFC. Keep in mind, these are "buffet" plates engineered to hold a little food as possible and still qualify for something other than a child's tea set.



I can say, without hesitation, that this was some of the best "buffet" food I've chowed on for some time. La Costa used to have a pretty good buffet at their old location, but they had a server. So you had to keep saying shit like "más por favor", "poco más", "guárdelo el venir". Here you get to pile it on until your plate resembles something from a Dr. Suess book. The rice was moist, the chili verde was spicy with tender pieces of pork. The chicken fajitas were great. Appeared to be all breast meat with a nice balance of onions and red pepper ratio. The mini cheese enchiladas we're moist and cheesy. In fact, after spreading the veggies out to make it look like I ate some, I went back for a second helping of chili verde and enchiladas. Atmosphere is like Applebee's or something—but that's OK. El Cazador is comfortable and the service was great. They have a full bar with early bar special and entertainment on certain nights. So it would be a good place to hit at different times of the day. For $9, including the drink- it was worthy of a revisit.

Chips and Salsa: ****
Food: ****
Service: ****
Atmosphere: ***


N.L. Bandito:

What better for a Halloween treat than to go review a Mexican restaurant called “The Hunter”? El Cazador restaurant is complete with severed animal heads on walls and a casino carpet worthy of slots, craps and black jack. It’s located on Truxton Avenue, just a hop west of Oak Street in the old Cask and Cleaver restaurant. You getting the holiday theme here? Heads cleaved onto walls, ghosts of old steakhouse waiters who used to stalk chicks in their cool 1980s waiter shorts. It’s now a big Mexican food buffet with decorations possibly left over from good old boy hunting trips after the Cask-and-Cleave-it-to-Beaver days when the restaurant was the PEE TROLL MAUSELEUM Club (Petroleum Club). Oh yeah, anyone who was cool used to work the Cask and Cleavage, and goodness knows what Lords of Bakersfield haunted the old desserts still wearing shorts and serving up the goodies at the old Cleaver naughty boy countertops when a country club type atmosphere.



Since the carpet looks like you’re in one of those off-the-main-Strip casinos, I was half expecting a one-armed bandit room for money hunters, complete with smoking. You know, if Bakersfield were Las Vegas, the entire bar would consist of rows of slot machines for drunks to spill their tequila on and lose their money.

And if you think I’m full of shit, just go to Vegas and hit up the Silver Nugget, the Poker Palace, and then top it off with a trip for the biggest goddam slice of breakfast Texas ham you can imagine, right down at Jerry’s Nugget north on Las Vegas Boulevard. I’m not lying, it’s about three inches thick.

El Cazador was surprisingly delicious. I’m not one for Mexican buffets. They’re usually roadkill made to look like someone slopped in grease and chile peppers. But not El Cazador’s buffet…



We ate a few chips first. Paprika on the chips? Nice touch. Salsa? A bit doctored as if bulk purchased, but flavorful. We hit the buffet and I skipped over the vegetables, except for marinated carrots, chiles and onions. Looked good. Tasted even better.


I forgot to take a photo of my plate: here's chingpea's

I slopped on a nice helping of rice: fluffy, not sticky, and not undercooked. I added some beans, chile verde, tasty chicken fajitas and a really nice-looking tamale that may have been bulk purchased. Unless Pepe’s grandmother was wrapping them in the back I would expect most restaurants to use a Mexican food vendor to purchase some of their bulk items like tamales. Yet they were good, pork I think. Sorry, I was so hungry that I inhaled the tamale without considering that I was supposed to be writing a food review. Try a little chile verde sauce on your tamale for a nice twist.

I did add some tasty Mexican corn bread to my plate. Now, this may be the white in me, but I prefer my cornbread to be firm, and not a slushy that I can drink. It’s customary for many Mexican dishes to have a softer form of a corn bread treat. And that’s OK too. It’s just not what I prefer. I know that MISFIT Ska King was all over his corn meal. You’d think he was brought up in that Central Valley farm town of McFarland. Oh yeah, he was. Willieboy “The Gringo” shied away from the corn mush as did chingpea. She showed up too and got to ride in Willieboy’s fancy art deco middle-aged white man mobile. Hell yeah I’m jealous!

Now get off your duff and hit up El Cazador. The folks there are just as nice as the food…

Chips and Salsa: ***1/2
Food: ***
Service: ***
Atmosphere: **


Guest Bandito, El Bakotopia Ska King:

Seeing as I am probably the most Mexican out of we three kings, allow me to school ustedes (you,) on the fine art of Mexican food dining.



I always say, that if the chips and salsa are fresh, the rest will be good. First impressions count and the small details are muy importante (very important!) In my opinion, the chips and salsa are probably the most important part of the Mex restaurant experience!

By the time NL picked me up for lunch, our other reviewers, Mike and Chingpea had already dug into the tapas (chips and salsa,) as we arrived. As soon as I strolled in, I did the same…Good salsa, and the chips were still crunchy! They earned one star right away with me.



Of course, we didn’t wanna waste anytime, so we jumped at the buffet. I’ve eaten here a few times, so I was pretty familiar with what they had going on. As usual, I was right: enchiladas, rice, beans, fajitas, and salads.

As NL and Mike pointed out, they did have the squishy sweet corn meal stuff (similar to El Torito, but wayyy better, I HATE El Torito,) and I piled that stuff on top of the rest of my plate. In true Mexican style, I piled everything on top of each other, paying no mind that different entrees were mixing with each other.

I noticed some bowls near the buffet trays, along with a separate serving tray with cilantro, onion, oregano, and limes……no way….MENUDO ON MONDAY???

What kind of Mexican joint is this? You don’t serve menudo on Monday, man…ahem…I mean, hombre’!



I went back to the table and started chowing on my first pile. Pretty standard “safe” Mexican fare, but not quite as blasphemous as Mexicali, which in my opinion is Mexi-can’t, not, and never will be…Maybe El Cazador is hoping for a picture of George Bush eating in their restaurant like at Mexicali West? Just kidding El C…

El Cazador has improved since my previous visits. I’ve been there before, and a few times, the service blew. Today though, the server was polite, not pushy, and seemed to be pretty observant from afar, the way I like it…Stay outta my plato, vato!

Mexican restaurant lunch buffets are always a sure thing, as long you never expect much other than the usual staple foods. The El Cazador buffet is no different from the many others I’ve been to including La Mina on Oak, or Anitas (the worst buffet and service,) on California. I did really like the fresh marinated vegetables they had next to the macaroni-mexi-mystery salad.

After I finished off my plate, I headed back for the menudo. I didn’t have a hangover, but it sounded good on a Monday... I filled my bowl, threw in the onion, oregano and lime, and went to town…Wow! This menudo was actually really good. Big-ups to Cazador for that! There’s no way it was the canned stuff either. Menudo takes a while to cook, and you can tell when the “canned shortcut,” has been taken.

As a Mexican who’s been raised on the real thing, it’s hard for me to love Mexican lunch buffets, so I have to plead the fifth on breaking it down too much. There is no comparison to my mom’s food, but I will tell you this…if I was hungover, El Cazador would definitely hit the spot.



The décor is kinda blah, mainly leftovers from the Cask and Cleaver / Petroleum club days. The animal heads on the walls would’ve been more authentic had they been chickens, stuffed roosters, or goats, maybe even a taxidermy crab, but rams? No way…Mexicans don’t hunt rams, they like chivos…

Chips and Salsa: *** (Good first impression)
Food: **3/4 (the same safe and sane stuff, but menudo was great.)
Service: *** (Didn’t bug, and that was good enough for me. However it was a buffet, and they didn’t have to work for a tip.)
Atmosphere: ** (It was clean, but needs more color. Frida Kahlo would never step in this place.)

***************************************

Michael "Willieboy" Willis is a grizzled 46 year old graphic artist. His studio, coincidentally called "Willis Design Studios", has been operating in Bakersfield for the last 26 years. His 15 minutes of fame came in 1997 when he co-authored a best selling book about webpage design titled "Web Pages That Suck". The rest remains a mystery. His personal page is www.willieboy.com.

N.L. Belardes is a novelist and blogger out of Bakersfield, California. He’s on myspace.com/nlbelardes and www.nlbelardes.com.

Matt "The Ska King" Munoz had headed up the infamous Latino ska band, Mento Buru for more than 15 years. He now heads up Bakotopia and has some kind of fancy title with MAS Magazine out of Bakersfield, California.

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Tuesday, October 31, 2006. You can leave your response.