Monday, August 3, 2009

Pancho Villa Mexican Restaurant & Bar Club


Tom: Neither of us had ever eaten at Pancho Villa's before, though I am pretty partial to Mexican food and figured despite the mostly negative things I had heard about it, I could get a pretty solid meal here. I had actually been been here once before, though it was somewhat of a harrowing experience. My mother and I were seated in about 95 degree heat, and the air conditioner in the restaurant was broken. There was some kind of large party in the room next to us, and our waitress said she'd be a while since she had to take care of their order. We ended up sitting there for about 10 minutes, before we finally went insane from heat stroke and decided to escape the restaurant through the back. Right at that moment, the waitress came back and asked us where we were going, so we kind of mumbled and continued leaving while the chef watched us through the window. Needless to say, PV's wasn't exactly high on my list of choice eateries after this.

(Seems like a bad sign to put in a parking lot)

But, Sam and I pressed on for the sake of food-bloggery. Also, we told Li we would meet him there. When we first pulled up to the restaurant, we noticed an orange gate with cinder blocks (one of them was broken, which is significant!) blocking the parking lot. Figuring it was under construction or something, we circled around the block and parked on the street. We had seen Li's car behind us and it had since disappeared, so we assumed he had done something similar.

After parking, we noticed that Li's car was in fact in the abandoned parking lot, and he had accidentally run over the gate without seeing it. The three of us cavorted nervously in the parking lot wondering what to do for a little bit until we went up to the restaurant and saw a great big real estate sign in the window.

(Not gonna lie, I was pretty happy that we didn't have to eat here)

Many restaurants are closing in Ithaca like the Lost Dog or the ABC Cafe, but I guess none of us were well acquainted enough with PV's to even know that it had closed. I don't really know when this happened, but it's too bad we never got to give it a fair shake.

Sam: Oh well! I was actually pretty happy that we didn't have to eat here. Between Tommy's experience, Li's experience and the various reviews on the internet it was a relief when we settled into one of the familiar booths at Chili's.