Surprise! It’s a Mexican restaurant that Ted didn’t pick!

Shane was really excited to pick this place, since it was recommended by some of the Mexican guys at his work and was told it was “one of the most authentic places in the area.”

I’ll save you suspense and just tell you right now that it didn’t beat Latinos. So the scale by which we now rate all Mexican restaurants is still intact.

But that’s not to say that La Loma didn’t have some good selling points.

First off, variety. And by that I mean that the menu is legit eight full pages front and back. We counted. So if you can’t find something here that at least sounds good to order then you probably should rethink what you’re doing in a restaurant at all.

Second, they bring your salsa to the table in individual dishes for everyone, which given we have a non-food-sharer in the group is always a way to score points at our table. It also gives us an excuse to customize our own salsa – which for the guys becomes a sort of unspoken contest on who can add as much hot sauce as possible without shedding tears into the chip basket.

Fair warning, here they give you two unmarked bottles of hot sauce, distinguishable only in that one is red and one is green. You get pic which might be hotter and what they might contain. Always a fun game!

We think the red was habanero. We know it has a kick. Consider yourself warned.

That being said, Ted speculated that we still ate about half the bottle ourselves and I don’t think he was wrong about that.

Good thing we had margaritas! Shane and I shared a pitcher of raspberry.

Meanwhile Ted opted for something on the menu called “guaba.”

What is guaba, you ask? Maybe a new fruit we haven’t heard of? How exciting!

Turns out that’s just how someone thinks you spell “guava” and it made it all the way into the menu without ever being questioned.

So there’s that.

For meals, Ted got the tostadas. They look like tiny little healthier versions of a Mexican pizza. How cute.

I got the Gordo burrito which has steak and rice on the inside, and a spicy sauce with onions and tomatoes on the outside.

Shane got his usual fajita burrito, along with and two enchiladas – the new standard by which all Mexican places will be judged for him, he says. He also ordered some fresh guacamole, which he calls “guacamole salad” because he wasn’t exactly expecting all of the other ingredients mixed in there.

The consensus was that it was all just fine. We didn’t have any issue with our meals – and in fact mine was a lot and I ended up taking half home – but conversely there was nothing super special about any of them that we get like we couldn’t get anywhere else.

If I’m being completely honest, the aforementioned habereno sauce probably saved the guy’s vote as a positive for this place. It was the one thing that really stood out as different and exceptional. Otherwise overall it likely would’ve been a solid “meh” from both of them.

I will say that the service was really good, with the servers being very attentive and friendly throughout our visit. Was that enough to tip it into our favorites list? Not really. Would we come back if we were in the area and had a hankering for a Mexican meal? Maybe. But would we make a point to drive there specifically from somewhere else? Probably not.

Because it was barely 8pm when we left La Loma, we decided to finish out our night with a stop nearby at The Brooklands – or rather, I guess what is now known as Steve O’s Speakeasy. Our last visit in there was October 2023, which it seems was shortly before “Steve” took over and rebranded the place. Definitely a bit of a different vibe, but still a cool place that will likely never escape the dive bar definition – even with the new bar shelves, back lighting and fancy name. It seems they maybe cut ties with the one-armed bartender that was working the last time we came in – the one who impressed us by cooking all of our meals and getting our drinks easily and quickly minus an appendage – because our inquiry of her to the current bartender was met with a quizzical look. Guess she didn’t have the speakeasy vibe.

Picked by: Shane