Sunday, September 22, 2013

La Hacienda (Bastrop, Tx)

We finally were able to try the ever so elusive La Hacienda restaurant this week, and I must say…based on many of your reviews so far I expected it to be much much worse! In all fairness I think we need to give these folks a chance. As someone said on Facebook earlier “the last thing Bastrop needs is another Mexican food restaurant!” and we couldn’t agree more! They really are attempting to introduce us to another side of Mexican food, and take it from a Southern Californian….Tex Mex is NOT the only way to go!

La Hacienda has a great atmosphere; it’s beautifully decorated and pristinely cleaned! They’ve got high standards, and that’s something that we DEFINTELY need around here! Our server was incredibly sweet, and really excited about working there!  We ordered two entrĂ©e’s and one IMG_8394soup, and over all the flavors were great! The major problem that we experienced was that each dish seemed to be missing just a little something. If La Hacienda would make sure to taste their dishes before serving, I think that would help tremendously! We ordered the (and please excuse me if I get something wrong here…) IMG_0331Suiza Pollo Enchiladas (below), a bowl of Pozole (to the right), and I had the Carnitas Pibil. (I think that’s what it was called anyway….). The Enchilada sauce was really tasty, it was some kind of green creamy avocado sauce, the thing we missed was some kind of seasoning on the chicken.  You could tell that the chicken was nothing more than poached with maybe a little salt in the water, and that was it. It definitely needed more. Unfortunately, same story on the Pozole, the richness of the broth was there and it again tasted yummy, but I asked for fresh lime and pico to go with it. The broth is very fatty, and it needed something fresh to help cut through that richness. Lastly, my dish, the Pork Pibil dish…this was my favorite! The meat was well seasoned, and really well cooked BUT again it was missing something. I was not impressed with it’s presentation (pictured below) and the plate could have used some fresh garnishes to go with…like avocado, or grilled peppers, something to help fill up your taco! The sides were good, but againIMG_3686 the beans were lacking salt and pepper, you could taste the Shiner Beer, which I really enjoyed and appreciated but it needed more. All in all La Hacienda just opened, and they FOR SURE need to work out some kinks, but if they paid a little more attention to detail, they could become a real asset to our small town community!