December 27, 2008
Yuma Southwestern Grill
Modern Taipei is metropolitan enough to offer some interesting, if not always authentic, takes on foreign cuisines. However, Mexican food, or more accurately Cal-Mex and Tex-Mex Americanized Mexican food, has been the big gap. To be honest I haven't even been brave enough to even try the local places, having seen such horrific reviews on the net. It's kinda surprising since you figure there's enough Americanized kids returning from Cali who've had their share of tacos and burritos to support a business. Instead, it's a sad state of affairs when Chili's is about the best one can hope for.
But hope sprang anew when I heard about Yuma Southwestern Grill, the new venture by the founder of Alleycats Pizza. Thankfully it's not too far from home so I was able to convince the heavily pregnant wife to waddle down Zhongxiao with me. The alley has quite the cluster of Western restaurants, with Alleycats, Toasteria, and Mary's Hamburger all right there besides Yuma.
The interior was spacious with high ceilings and widely spaced tables but the warm southwestern colors and decor gave it warmth. There's also more space downstairs and outside with long tables & benches for big crowds, regular tables and chairs for couples, and a bar for singles. The menu is definitely concentrated on the namesake grill, with ribs chickens, and prawns in various sauces all cooked by the coal grill. The appetizers looked good, too.
The menu description for the Nachos Nevada: "Tortilla chips, Monterey Jack cheese, fajita style bell peppers and onions, jalapeños topped with romaine lettuce, tomato salsa, sour cream, and fresh cilantro." All served in a sizzling hot iron skillet. Oh my god that sure sounded good. It's been so long since I've had a good plate of nachos. It came piled high with all the good stuff listed above, kept warm by the hot&heavy iron skillet, and it's big enough to be an entree for two, or shared as an appetizer amongst a whole table.
With the big appetizer, we decided that one entree to share between the two of us was enough. Chose the half-chicken with the peri-peri sauce, which was a flavor I haven't seen around here before. Even the half-chicken was plenty for the two of us to share. Marinated with the tangy-spicy peri-peri sauce, with additional peri-peri and also a cilantro cream dipping sauces on the side. The meat was juicy and tender, even the breast meat. Got the "combo" with Spanish rice and corn on the side, but the rice was only okay and the corn was a sad joke, but at least the chicken was legit. And we still had some nachos left to work on. Belgian beer with Mexican food? Sure, why not, as the big 500ml glass of refreshing Hoegaarden was good company to the spicy food.
Left enough room to share a dessert. Might as well as go as Mexican as possible so we chose the vanilla-lime flan. The Mexican pudding is a bit harder than the typical milk pudding, and the lime juice and zest added a bit of extra tang and flavor. But I wasn't really blown away by it.
Wished our stomachs were bigger or we had a larger group to check out more of the menu. A local-run place certainly offers more foodie-cred than Chili's. They have some nice-looking biz-lunch deals, too. Too bad I'm not around to take advantage of them. Might be a good choice next time we need a place to arrange a big group dinner with wife's sister & cousins.
Yuma Southwestern Grill
台北市忠孝東路四段216巷11弄21號
Lane 216, Alley 11, #21 ZhongXiao East Road Section 4
02-87738895