Guapo's Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

One of my organizations had a dinner meeting last night in the upstairs "fiesta room" at Guapo's Restaurant in the Tenleytown neighborhood. While I didn't write a review about it, I'd eaten in their main dining room once before about two years ago, and it's okay Tex-Mex food. It's a small chain of about eight restaurants in the D.C. metropolitan area. This particular store is right on top of the Tenleytown Metro stop.

As always, they put out lots of baskets of chips and salsa. I didn't nibble on much, because I was talking to lots of people, but I recall larger chunks of onion and bigger pieces of fresh cilantro leaves in the salsa.

For my main course, I got the chiles rellenos. These are made by taking some of those big, dark green peppers and stuffing them with Monterrey Jack cheese, which are then breaded and fried, then covered with ranchero sauce and more cheese before serving. They were plated with seasoned rice and a leaf of lettuce with sour cream, guacamole, and pico de gallo; a bowl of brown beans was on the side. I wasn't able to pay a lot of attention to the food, but I remember the chiles had good flavor and were very consistent with what one would expect at a Tex-Mex chain restaurant (my favorite chiles rellenos are actually New Mexican-style, but that truly is a very different culinary genre than Tex-Mex).

The guys on either side of me both had fajitas. They sizzled and made a lot of noise.

It just occurred to me this morning that nobody ordered dessert! That's too bad, cause they have good cheesecake chimichangas here (cheesecake wrapped up in a tortilla and then deep fried), not to mention tres leches cake.