First of all, about that name. What marketing genius came up with this masterpiece? "Gringo" is a derogatory, slightly archaic Mexican term for naive Anglos, and calling a restaurant by this is rather like naming a soul food place "Whitey's," a Chinese restaurant "Round Eyes" or a Jewish deli "Goyim." It's not exactly confidence inspiring if you're looking for authentic Mexican food. I'm also wanting to see an apostrophe in there, so it would be "Gringo's" like "McDonald's."
And while we're discussing the non-food-related aspects of these eateries, I'm thinking they could have come up with something a little more original than, "You'll flip over our food." I've seen it all over town on benches and billboards, which I'm sure are quite expensive to rent. Perhaps they could have gone with one less bench and fattened their creative team's paychecks a bit. My apologies if this is the winning product of some elementary school's ad competition.With all that said and out of the way, I have to reluctantly admit that the food is not all that bad. It's certainly no Lenito's or Burrito Baby, but it's a cut above most of those other fast Mexican food places with the word "taco" in their names. I ordered almost one of everything on the menu, spent less than $20 and didn't see one drop of that disgusting orange-colored grease that usually oozes from these types of food products.
They even make an effort at presentation. Their "Gringo Grande," a burrito with ground beef, beans, cheese, etc., for $2.89 was served smothered in hot sauce, on a paper plate with carefully arranged shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes and red, green and yellow tortilla chips that we thought were supposed to resemble the Mexican flag. Nice touch for a quickie.
There was also a dish that, believe it or not, I would return for. It was their shredded beef burrito, made with rice, beans, shredded beef, cheese lettuce and tomatoes, for a mere $2.29. We took our servers' suggestion to add guacamole and sour cream for an extra 75 and ended up with a burrito far better than what you usually see in a chain establishment like this.
I was excited to see too that they didn't stop with ground or shredded beef and that they have health consciously added chicken to their menu. Almost any of their dishes can be ordered with chicken, which would be a nice touch if the chicken were of a little higher quality. It didn't look flaked and formed, but it certainly tasted that way. At least they took the care to chop it up, rather than serve it in those strange little frozen pot pie cubes, as some fast food places do. It was moist but salty and grainy. I decided that next time I'd stick with the shredded beef.
Another item worth ordering is the seasonal "pumpkin empanada," which is more like a chimichanga than an empanada, but who's noticing? It's pumpkin pie filling, wrapped in a flour tortilla, fried, then rolled in brown sugar and cinnamon, for 89 cents. In addition, they also have light and fluffy tortilla chips dusted with sugar and cinnamon, that supposedly come free when you order more than $10 worth of food. We never got ours, but we enjoyed the samples on the counter while we waited for our food.
Which didn't take long. Before we could pour our own drinks and fill our little plastic cups with one of the four kinds of salsa at the salsa bar, our food was ready and waiting to be whisked to a plastic booth by a polite high school student in a nifty cap. They're efficient at Gringos.
So actually, if you're in a rush on your way home from work and you really don't feel like cooking a meal for the entire family, there are many worse and more expensive places to stop. Gringos even has Mexican fried potato nuggets, for children who don't like much else. You probably won't see me buying and wearing a Gringos T-shirt, which is readily available at the counter, but you wouldn't see me driving around the block to avoid the smell either.
Rating: * *
Gringos, 245 W. 500 South in Bountiful; 919 E. 4500 South in Murray; 34007 S. 5600 West in Hunter; 1860 S. Redwood Road in Salt Lake City; 2785 W. 3500 South in West Valley City. Usually open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. but schedules may vary. Checks are accepted, but credit cards are not.