{"id":451,"date":"2007-07-09T22:52:31","date_gmt":"2007-07-10T06:52:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chanfles.com\/blog\/?p=451"},"modified":"2010-10-17T19:13:51","modified_gmt":"2010-10-18T03:13:51","slug":"huevos-rancheros-marquez-restaurant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chanfles.com\/blog\/?p=451","title":{"rendered":"Huevos Rancheros: Marquez Restaurant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/chanfles.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/hr_marquez_menu.jpg\" alt=\"hr_marquez_menu.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I love starting off the day (preferably during the weekend!) with a cup of coffee and a proper plate of HR&#8217;s, the pick-me-up from the caffeine propels you thru the often rich and heavy dish, which in turn powers your activities for the rest of the day. Ah, but sometimes, things get a little crazy, errands need to be ran, things need to get done, and before you know it&#8217;s already 3:30 pm and you are just sitting down to your first meal of the day. No matter that it&#8217;s past lunch time, my mind was stuck on breakfast. Even though I was in Monterey Park, I found a spot that was willing to satisfy my cravings. &#8220;Sir, I will gladly pay you Tuesday for some fine Huevos Rancheros today.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Nah, I didn&#8217;t really say that, most likely just &#8220;unos huevos rancheros, por favor. Gracias.&#8221; Oh, and &#8220;de harina&#8221; since he asked. I don&#8217;t expect to get tortillas with this dish as some places don&#8217;t consider it necessary, the same way you&#8217;ll often not get them when you order enchiladas or <a href=\"http:\/\/loteriachicana.net\/2007\/07\/08\/chilaquiles-at-juquila\" target=\"_blank\">chilaquiles<\/a>. When they do offer a choice (and they don&#8217;t make their own de maiz) I&#8217;m mostly an harina guy as I hate the taste of the modern commercial tortilla de maiz ala Guerrero and the rest of the culprits. You might as well eat a paper plate, cheaper and probably tastes better. Or maybe it&#8217;s just my Norte\u00c3\u00b1o roots. In any case, even though I&#8217;ve only been here a few times, I do look forward to maiz in the form of these fried bite sized morsels, aka chips..<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/chanfles.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/hr_marquez_chips.jpg\" alt=\"hr_marquez_chips.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>..as they are usually warm and they always come with two tasty salsas, a pico de gallo-ish one and a salsa verde with chunks of cebollita, that one ingredient I love in just about everything. It&#8217;s not uncommon for the decision of &#8216;where to eat&#8217; to be influenced by that minor perk of the chips and salsa and their relative quality, which is very appealing when you are famished and contemplating your very late breakfast. Devour a few doritos with salsa and begin to relax, back to semi-normality. Oh yes, here comes the main dish!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/chanfles.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/hr_marquez.jpg\" alt=\"hr_marquez.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a quick pointer: if your food comes covered in yellow cheese you know that you are in a Mexican-American restaurant, I don&#8217;t think there is such a thing as yellow cheese in Mexican cuisine. I wish more food reviews and guides would make that distinction between Mexican and Mex-American eateries since there is a wide chasm between the two, the American version usually being totally bogged down in cheese, sour cream, iceberg lettuce, guacamole, and general heaviness. There is a place for both styles but it&#8217;s jarring when you expect a simple dish only to get served a boatload of food covered in cheese, if you&#8217;ve ever been to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.barragansrestaurants.com\/home.php?id=43\" target=\"_blank\">Barragan&#8217;s<\/a> you&#8217;ll know what I mean. (I&#8217;m working up the energy to eventually go try those HR&#8217;s again, I still skip a breath thinking of the ones from many years ago!)<\/p>\n<p>That being said, I expected lots of cheese on this and they delivered. But they also drowned the whole thing in a tomatoey red sauce, which was tasty enough, so the cheese just blended in. But really, it looks more like a mini-caldo of huevos, don&#8217;t you think? Did I mention I was starving? I&#8217;d already had more than a few bites before I started contemplating the taste when I decided I liked these HR&#8217;s despite how cheesy they were. And then I realized there&#8217;s not even a tortilla underneath, even though it&#8217;s mentioned on the menu. Maybe they just forgot. And these beans are hinting at some sort of meat flavor\/ingredient but I couldn&#8217;t tell for sure, I mostly left those alone. Despite those drawbacks, I ate my plate up and was very content. I really liked the dish but this just might be a very clouded review, like a junkie getting that first fix after a long forced withdrawal. And you do know to never trust a junkie, right?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s $6.10 for the plate and if you get a window booth you can watch all the goings-on at the cemetery across the street, not a bad deal.<\/p>\n<p>1965 S. Potrero Grande, Monterey Park<br \/>\n626-572-7245<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love starting off the day (preferably during the weekend!) with a cup of coffee and a proper plate of HR&#8217;s, the pick-me-up from the caffeine propels you thru the often rich and heavy dish, which in turn powers your &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/chanfles.com\/blog\/?p=451\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"h5ap_radio_sources":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-huevos-rancheros","category-la-comida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chanfles.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chanfles.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chanfles.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chanfles.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chanfles.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chanfles.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2175,"href":"https:\/\/chanfles.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions\/2175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chanfles.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chanfles.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chanfles.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}