TOD:
Well, I'm not that terribly fond of chain restaurants. IMO, any place where the guy running the kitchen isn't even learning directly from the chef who devised the dishes, but is instead following instructions from a book where the first rule is to
never ever ever deviate from the book, the end result is going to be something that is bland and uninteresting. The manager will be spinning his wheels, trying to keep from being ground into powder by the corporate management, all the while grinding the workers in the shop down into even finer powder, and I don't mean fine as in wonderful. The inspiration and motivation will be gone, and the odds will be a meal that will just sit in my stomach like so much tofu and surimi. Bleh.
That being said, der Brucer and I do enjoy ourselves at the local
La Tonalteca. It's part of a
small chain, where the employees take pride in what they're doing: presenting authentic Mexican dishes in a friendly setting. We were afraid that, in moving to Delaware, we wouldn't find anything to satisfy my Mex cravings - La Tonalteca proved us wrong.