Plaza Nueva Mexican Grill
Well, even though Plaza Nueva didn’t win the number one spot in the Cleveland.com “Cleveland’s Best Mexican Restaurant” contest, or even in the top 10; it did finish in the top 20 which, when you consider how many Mexican places there are, is pretty impressive! Our regular Mexican “go to” did NOT make the list at all, which disappointed us greatly, so we were anxious to see what was so much better about some of these other places. We’ve come to the conclusion that even though this was good, the “BEST” is strictly a matter of opinion, which is what it’s all about I suppose.
We were surprised at how quickly the place filled up at such at early hour (5:00), but our server Jonathan was attentive and pleasant. Plaza Nueva is a really large, well-lit, clean restaurant with comfortable booths and large tables to accommodate any size party. This was the first time that the tortilla chips were multi-colored. They were good, but didn’t seem even remotely house-made. The salsa was on the “very mild” side and extremely watery. There was no way to get any to stay on the chip. That was a serious strike in my book. The menu is pretty large with mostly the typical items that you’d see on any Mexican restaurant menu. Even though Mr. Z studied the entire menu and was wavering with his choice, he ended up ordering the chicken and shrimp fajitas. He said they were VERY good. The strips of chicken were huge and very tender and flavorful. The shrimp were good as well. The only big difference between these and the ones he gets at our regular place was that these were ‘drier’ (meaning not as much sauce, but not actually DRY). His actual comment was that they are both very good, but DIFFERENT, so one isn’t necessarily better than the other. Hmmmmmm! I had the Burrito Del La Casa. It was huge and stuffed with chicken, chorizo, pinto beans (I had a choice on the beans) and rice, then covered with cheese and sour cream. It was good, but in all honesty, I wouldn’t order it again – too much. Plus, the flour tortilla that was wrapped around all of that yummy stuffing was a little on the tough side. I was sort of disappointed that Mr. Z’s fajitas didn’t come with a little dollop of guacamole like he usually gets, so I didn’t get to sample that. The menu says that their guac is all house-made tableside, so I guess that’s one reason they don’t arbitrarily garnish each dish with it. I still would have like to have tried it, but not enough to order an entire serving. His dish did come with refried beans which were good – nothing outstanding, but good. Finally, I had ordered their house margarita (the REGULAR size, even though Tuesday is their $5.99 JUMBO special night) and found it to be okay – nothing outstanding, but pretty good. The balance between the tequila and whatever else they use was off, but it was still pretty good.
Would we go back to Plaza Nueva???? Sure we would – it was good, however, it wasn’t any better than our regular place and I think we’d much rather work our way through those “Top 20”, which is our intention!
Plaza Nueva is located at:
7106 Biddulph Road
Brooklyn, OH
(216) 230-2294
https://www.plazanuevamexicangrill.com/