I'll be honest and say that I don't know much about the Phoenix food scene, so when I was headed there for almost a week for work and a conference, I had no clue as to where to go. The only thing I knew was that it was probably worth trying Mexican food there. My first night there also coincided with the NCAA Finals so I had wanted to go to a place that also had a few TVs for me to catch the game. Enter Blanco. Eric actually found it on Yelp and it was about a 5 minute drive from my hotel, was Mexican food, had TVs AND outdoor seating, so I was down with everything that I heard about it.
The one nice thing about Phoenix during this time of the year was that the weather was fairly pleasant. It was about 85 degrees but it was a nice dry heat and I love the fact that almost every place had an open air feeling to it. The menu here is as you would have expected: nachos, guacamole, burritos, enchiladas, tacos and a few other main entrees. Eric and I split the nachos (regularly $12 but we just made it under the wire for happy hour where appetizers are half price) to start since we were starving and I opted for the fish tacos ($13.50). The nachos were served with guacamole, crema fresca, black beans, sour cream and pico de gallo...so kind of your typical nacho dish except the creama fresca was this weird white melty cheese instead of the neon yellow kind or even the freshly grated kind. It was kind of what you expected from bar nachos. The fish tacos were 3 to the dish and served with avocado and pico de gallo and served with rice and beans. The fish was of your generic grilled white fish variety and the tacos were of the corn variety (although you can also ask for flour tortillas) - they were perfectly fine fish tacos but they didn't blow my mind like the ones I had at ABC Cocina. Despite being full, Eric and I still left room for dessert and since I wasn't dying for dessert, we tried to go with Eric's choice of the sopaillas which are essentially fried donuts. But just our luck, as soon as our waitress put in our order they "ran out". Boo! So we opted for the flan instead ($5). So here is what I loved about the dinner...the chef actually came out of the kitchen to personally apologize about running out of the sopaillas and even compted us for the flan. I thought that was so incredibly nice of him and totally unnecessary. I don't know if that is AZ charm or what but I really did appreciate the nice gesture. In fact, the service all around was pretty great. When Eric asked for a coke, they said "Is Pepsi ok?" and they must have realized it wasn't, so the manager actually went into their staff fridge and brought Eric a coke - again a nice and totally unnecessary gesture.
While I didn't think the food was anything spectacular and sadly the drinks were pretty bad (don't order the white sangria unless you like drinking sugar through a straw), the setting and service were on point for what I was looking for. From what I heard, this place is a chain in AZ and normally I'm not a huge fan of chain restaurants but I would probably come back to this place if I was back in AZ and just wanted a nice place to chill out. Total bill with tips, tax and drinks: $83/pp
Photo Credit: Yelp
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