As the year draws to an end, budgets dwindle, while stress shoots through the roof. The price of food tends to be one of the greatest causes of stress while the consumption of it is one of the strongest relievers. For those of you with nearly empty pockets from Christmas shopping, and patches of hair missing from worry about final exams, one local restaurant never fails to satisfy that fat craving, while avoiding a ‘dip’ into your savings: La Casa Mexican Restaurant.
Located near the Dierbergs complex, La Casa always has a constant influx of locals looking for something to munch on.
It’s difficult to walk out of the festive building having an individual check larger than $10. The most popular dishes usually include some version of grilled chicken, queso (cheese), refried beans, and rice. Every time I’ve had a meal there (which would be many, many times) it’s always been good, and always been the same. That is the trick: consistency. There’s something very comforting about walking into a restaurant and having the satisfaction of ordering a plate of familiar taste.
The chicken is always sliced into the same bite sized strips, the cheese always maintains the same thick, liquid, saltiness, the beans just as smooth and fattening as expected, and the chips are deep fried to a perfect crispiness that leaves your fingertips slick and greasy.
Often, restaurant soda is flat, and lacking of flavor due to an overload of ice to save the restaurant money. Even if you don’t like Coke, you will gargle the sweet perfection that is La Casa’s Coca-Cola. It reaches the exact point of carbonation before being too fizzy sizzling in your mouth and working its way down your throat. The carbonation to sugar ratio couldn’t be more exact, each complimenting one another instead of one overpowering.
No table or chair is the same, each decorated with colorful images of some aspect of Mexican culture. Three-dimensional suns with faces smile down at farmers herding horses. The long, braided hair of a young girl extends past a family preparing a dish with tortillas.
For you busy high-school students, who don’t believe you have time to have a sit-down meal, please reconsider with this restaurant. It’s unlikely that in my years of going to La Casa, I’ve had a wait any longer than fifteen minutes, often with a party of seven. Even with how quickly it’s prepared, it’s still hot, still fresh, and still satisfying.
La Casa is by no means a five-star restaurant. It’s cheap and it’s fast, but that’s what makes it so great. It just happens to do the best job at being an easy option.
