Mexico Tipico is located at 23021 Hisega Rd. west of Rapid City on the Rimrock Highway. What was once the Fire Side Inn for over 10 years, has taken on a whole new look and feel. For us old timers who have dined at the Fire Side Inn, you will remember the large fire place in the middle of the restaurant, romantic lighting, booth and tables separated from one another, and some of the most amazing food in the city.
Flash forward to today and it is totally different. While the layout is mostly the same, where the huge round fire place use to stand is a large box taking up quite a bit of space that is useless. Not quite sure what they were thinking, it makes no sense and quite honestly is an eye sore. They did keep the secondary fire place that sits back against a wall, but that is about the only thing that even remotely looks the same.
The walls are a lime green, with paintings of Old Mexico. Hanging above the tables and booths are colorfully banners. Most of the table tops and chairs have some sort of Mexican painting depicting something from the past. Gone away is the mood lighting, to bright stark lighting. There still is a bar, and outdoor patio.
Grouchy ventured up to Mexico Tipico Friday night for a bite to eat. The drive is nice, it is about 20 minutes from Rapid. Mexico Tipico has such a large menu, so Grouchy was a bit excited since they have just about anything you may want when it comes to Mexican food. Grouchy settled on a plate that had a little bit of everything, to include the Spanish rice and beans. I ordered one of the house specials, for $14.99 my meal included Chalupa, Chile Relleno, Taco, Enchilada, and a Burrito all with my choices of meat. Not too bad for 15 bucks.
Every meal comes with homemade chips and salsa, I ordered a small side of Guacamole to go with my chips for what I was thinking would be a little up charge. Small side and little up charge is important here I will get to that shortly. The chips were worm and crispy but the homemade salsa needed work, I have had better coming straight out of the jar. It was more like a tomato juice with chunks in it. I expected much more from homemade salsa from an “authentic” restaurant. You could see that there were chunks of onion and tomato, but the amount of cilantro they put in it was so overpowering all I could taste was tomato juice and ditch weed. And there was no spice at all, one would think that homemade salsa from a Mexican restaurant there would be some sort of kick. Mrs. Giago’s homemade salsa spanks theirs any day of the week.
My meal arrived and I had to ask again for the guacamole that I wanted for my chips, but now I guess for my taco. My meal was served on two large plates, the Spanish rice and refried beans took up half of the plate. Now this is where the case of looks can be deceiving kicks in—it all looked great, smelled good, but upon digging in I was disappointed. The rice and beans had very little flavor, the ground beef in the chalupa had no flavor at all, I had chicken in the taco and that was good, and the shredded pork in the enchilada was good, but the chile relleno was covered in sauce so what was once crispy turned soggy, and finally: I found the heat, instead of taking the seeds out of the pepper they left them in, and poof, flaming palate.
Now we will get to the homemade guacamole. I got a 2 oz. cup of ditch weed! For $2.50! I am not sure what was worse, the price or the guacamole. There was so much cilantro that was not even chopped up it ruined the whole flavor. Again Mrs. Giago’s beats theirs any day of the week. My total was $18.28 when I asked about the $2.50 charge for 2 oz. of guacamole I was told that avocados are very expensive right now. Well, have you ever heard of shopping around because avocados are .88 cents each at Wal-Mart and there was way more cilantro in there then avocado.
Over all I am giving Mexico Tipico 2 stars. Food was not that great, guacamole was way overpriced, service was so-so, dropped off my meal and never seen anyone again till it was time to pay the bill. All though the drive was nice, I would not take that trip again for Mexico Tipico.
Until next week, hit the lakes, use lots of sun screen and have a good week! Good eats.
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