The Cantina

2 Reviews on “The Cantina”

• Ferndale93

  Best Mexican food around. Not so much the traditional Mexican dishes that you get everywhere. Little more flair to them. Great prices and big servings. I love their house salsa. I think it’s better than any of their samplers that you can get.

  November 5, 2014, 11:16 pm

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• David

  Uneven, But Promising. The Cantina is located inside the Silver Reef Hotel/Casino. I rarely gamble, but I eat quite often so we decided to give it a shot. There are actually several restaurants in the Casino that look interesting, and well be going back to try some more of them. This one bills itself as a Mexican/Latin American restaurant. I didnt see much real Latin American fare on the menu; however, theres a lot of gourmet style Mexican stuff that you wont find at a traditional Mexican restaurant in Bellingham. Prices vary all over the place, from $8.95 for Huevos Rancheros to $22.95 for Beef Arrachera Mazatlan. In general, the prices are a bit higher than youll find at other Mexican places around town. We limited our selections to appetizers and soups because so many of them looked interesting. The usual chips and dip came with chips that were just okay and a very mild but interesting dip that seem to be loaded with cilantro. We started with a sampling of three salsas: Tomatillo Avocado, Roasted Tomato-Habanero and Roasted Tomatillo/Arbol Chile. The first two were quite good, but the last one had too much Arbol chile and was a bit bitter. We then had the Queso Fundito (queso blanco topped with chorizo, poblano chilies and mushroom ragout). This was a huge serving, suitable for four people and was quite good. We also shared the Jalapeo Relleno (fire roasted garlic, chorizo and goat cheese-stuffed jalapeos, battered, fried and topped with lime crema) which were also good. For our last samplers, my wife had a bowl of the Pork Chile Verde and I had a bowl of the Corono Queso. Her pork was incredibly tender, but the dish was almost all pork and very little chile. The chile itself was very bland. My Corono Queso was outstanding, the best thing I tasted in the whole dinner.EDITWe went back recently to sample some more. The house salsa seems to have been tweaked to be somewhat sweeter. Bad move. We also tried the Tequila Black Bean Salsa, which was very mild. Its supposed to have Guajillo chiles in it, but we couldnt taste any. For appetizers, we each had a chili relleno. They were perfect and consisted of a poblano chili stuffed with a nice cheese filling and deep fried to perfection. For entres, my wife had the Grilled Carne Asada Tacos and I had seafood Chipotle Cream Enchiladas. Her dish was inedible. The beef was so heavily marinated that it didnt taste like beef at all. My dish was okay but lacked any real depth of flavor. To their credit, when we were asked how we liked our dinners, we brought up my wifes taco dish, and were immediately offered a substitute dish, which we declined. Then within a few minutes the manager came over and talked to us in detail about what went wrong. He comped my wifes entre and seemed genuinely interested in our feedback.So the summary is that this place is very uneven. Weve had some great appetizers, a couple of really good Quesos, fine chili rellenos, and a few good salsas. But a lot of the salsas were off the mark. One too sweet, one too bitter, one too tasteless, and our entres and Chile Verde varied from very poor to just okay. Still, I hold out some hope for this place. They can put good food on the plate, and seem to want to get better.

  September 30, 2013, 6:15 pm

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