So I thought I had a great idea today. The Dodo, a restaurant the GPaK — pre-blog days — has visited a few times, seemed like a great spot to kick off the next 20 reviews. We departed the News building and utilized TRAX to get to The Gateway. I was looking forward to raving about the turkey sandwich The Dodo serves. Upon exiting at our TRAX stop, the excitement turned to disappointment as the building once occupied by The Dodo sat empty. So while trying to pay a visit to an extinct bird, we learned the restaurant, too, (at least this location) was flightless.
And while second choices often work out for the better, I'm not certain that this second choice conquered what would have been a great meal.
With several choices at our disposal, we opted for a knock-off of the previously reviewed Cafe Rio called Costa Vida. Upon entering, it was noted by GPaK that Costa Vida seemed to inherit the line that one expects at Cafe Rio. That said, the wait was fairly short and we made it to the front of the line within 5 minutes.
I opted for the sweet pork burrito for $6.49 and, as usual, I elected to skip the "smothered" option that every burrito maker loves to talk you into. I sense that it's almost a shock to their system when I tell them no, but this guy went with my answer and sent the burrito through the conveyor belt for a little extra heat. The burrito burst at the seams while taking on a few degrees of temperature, and to their credit Costa Vida was not happy with what happened to the burrito during its short life. They happily constructed me a new one, and the end result probably tasted the same but made for a better photograph (see above).
The burrito itself was a solid meal. The pork was sweet and full of flavor, but I felt the tortilla was a little on the dry side. I always opt to go without the smothered option because I feel the extra sauce and cheese overpowers the true flavor of the pork. This may be the only time I ever say this, but this was the one time where enchilada style might have been better. The tortilla just lacked enough moisture to let me enjoy the flavorful meat. It wasn't bad, just a little off and left me wishing for the manned-up version of this bad boy.
In typical SuperScrunch fashion, I opted for water to chase my meal. It was in a word, watery, and I went with a refill for our walk back to the TRAX station.
For a mid-October day, it was about as nice as one could imagine, so we opted for outdoor dining. I'm guessing my counterparts will expand upon what turned into a little cooker.
Man-up possibilities: 9
Food quality: 7
Service: 8 (friendly enough, and they remade my burrito)
Fizz-o-meter of Coke: 8 (via GPaK)
Water: watery
Overall: 7.5 (this went down an extra notch for a lack of post-meal mints — a favorite of some members of the Crew)
Quotes of the day...
"You could just log in as Ron Jeremy, and they're not going to know."
"You get to come down here to the mall and watch women in tall boots walk by."
"Is that like codpiece?"
"Greg, will you lean about 2 feet higher?"
"My head is boiling."
"Could you get me a parasol when you're in there?"
"Someone could interrogate me right now and they'd get pretty far."
"Do you want me to develop Mormonrank?"
"I think the child's body would cushion the blow."
A new feature this week is SuperScrunch's word of the week. This feature came about because I often found myself asking my elder statesmen (I am the youngest of the bunch) to define their 40-year-old vocabulary (I'm a mere 33 years old in one week). Today's word is:
Pejorative (pi-jawr-uh-tiv)
–adjective
–noun | 1. | having a disparaging, derogatory, or belittling effect or force: the pejorative affix -ling in princeling. |
| 2. | a pejorative form or word, as poetaster. |
