we could be sisters, no?

tonight i has a surprise night on the town (read: shamir-style...west village and union square) with the ever glamorous KC (pictured above with me at a party this past july in j'lem). we grabbed dinner at an old favorite of mine, Panchito's Mexican Restaurant.

i can't lie; i'm pretty sure it was my first time that i went there and didn't have an alcoholic drink. it was actually one of the first places i ever had a drink out at a restaurant -- in oct. of my junior year of college i came to nyc for the weekend and met some friends there for dinner. it was a few months before i turned 21 and they didn't card. wahoo! i've been there a few times since, including the night in may 2005 i went to see Mysterious Skin (our first Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie) with AB (this summer we saw Brick at the j'lem film festival).

anyway, i'm not at all trying to imply that the lack of alcohol had anything to do with my disappointment in the food, however, i was not as impressed with the food as i have been in the past. the salsa was watery. we were seated in a corner and we were forgotten about many times. our waitress didn't ask if we wanted drinks even once; after we ate some salsa&chips and our order finally came, then we asked for water which she brought. we also had to ask for forks and knives after our meals came.

i splurged and ordered jalepeno poppers in additon to a huge veggie burrio. poppers are one of those semi gross deep friend foods that i've only recently started to like. (they are quite spicy but the cheesiness wins out!) sadly, despite the menu description of plenty of hot cheese, the poppers merely contained a small blob of solid ambiguous white cheese. that was not worth eating something super spicy and crazy deep fried. the $7.95 burrito was decent, but spicy for no reason and way too many beans. at the end of the day, the real issue is that it wasn't as yummy as my regular order from burritoville, lost in austin, which is $6.99. will i ever enjoy mexican food again beyond burritoville?

the waitress did check on us once during the meal; however, we had to track her down in order to get the check after much waiting.

all in all (forgive me for using inexcusable redudant phrase), it was a lovely evening. we took a walk up to union square and enjoyed a cool evening that still wasn't bone-chillingly-freezing.