Review: Fresco Tortillas Grill

Name: Fresco Tortillas Grill
Address: 214 Walton St, Syracuse, NY
Phone: (315) 472-8226
Neighborhood: Downtown (Armory Square)
Website: www.yelp.com/biz/fresco-tortillas-syracuse
Menu: View Menu
Cuisine: Mexican, Tex-Mex, Asian Fusion
Restaurant Hours: 11 AM to 9:30 PM Monday-Thursday, 11 AM to 10:30 PM Friday-Saturday, 12 PM to 10 PM Sunday
Parking: On-Street
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Take-Out: Yes
Delivery: Yes

Ummmm...

Uhhhhhh...

Errrrr...

I don't like writing negative reviews. Mainly because I don't want to bash a place that is just trying to fit in. But I have no idea what to make of this place. Objectively, I suppose you could call the food here Asian Fusion, but it's more or less a Chinese restaurant attempting to serve Mexican food.

In what was the old Movino's Pizza location on Walton Street, Fresco Tortillas and Grill has been open in Armory Square for about a year now. The name is borrowed from a family restaurant in New York City of the same. Other local family businesses include Dragon City and Oishi Sushi.

Inside are a few high tables, tall chairs, a flat screen TV playing the news, and a counter in the back for ordering. I was the only person in here sans for what I assume was the owner's child playing with toys around one of the tables.

The menu is laid out like a typical Chinese restaurant with numbers along sides of menu items. It's relatively small, but has some tempting options like nachos, taco locos (flour tortilla with cheese wrapping a hard shell taco), tostadas, chili con carne, and quesadillas (the mixed vegetable with bok choy, baby corn, and carrots is probably the perfect example of "Asian Fusion" here). A decent portion of the menu is made in-house including the beans, salsa, tortilla chips, and flour tortillas.

The order...

Chicken Burrito: $4.99
Shrimp Taco: $3.09
Sprite: $1.09
Total money spent with tax & tip: $9.60

The food came out extremely fast. Probably the quickest I've ever gotten food that wasn't fast food. There was something kind of awkward about being in there by myself the 1-2 minutes while I was waiting for my food. The interior is kind of strange and uncomfortable, so when I got my meal (which had already been placed into a plastic bag) I decided to take it over to Armory Square Park and eat outside.

Pictured here is the shrimp taco with lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese all in a hard shell.

The taco shell was good; a nice crunch and served warm, but nothing else really held up. The shrimp was more or less the stir-fry kind you'd find at a Chinese buffet and there were large pieces of lettuce with just a couple pieces of tomatoes inside. The salsa and sour cream both came in separate mini plastic containers. Although it's advertised as homemade, the salsa was essentially what you'd expect from any canned salsa. A pretty basic taco, but I didn't finish the shrimp (which is blasphemous in my family).

BURRITO BALL.

Pictured above is the chicken burrito: a grilled 12-inch flour tortilla served with chicken, white rice, black beans, lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese.

A HUGE portion size (essentially a giant rolled up ball of food), but most of which consisted of rice and beans. Very few tomatoes, large pieces of romaine lettuce, and generally bland black beans. While hot and fully cooked, the chicken was moist, albeit a little spongy, and the rice was pretty soggy (dare I say, sticky rice?). I did like the grilled flour tortilla, but the rest left a lot to be desired. Certainly edible, but I just wasn't up for finishing it.

Some other things of note...

- Fresco offers catering to nearby businesses

- They also offer delivery within Downtown with a $10 minimum

I suppose if you like the individual ingredients (say, beans, cheese, or rice) it will suffice here. Nothing was really coming together for me though. The tortillas were respectable, but what's a tortilla if the actual ingredients don't hold up? It's very quick food, so if you're stretched for time during a lunch break, it might do. I think my money may have been more well-spent had I walked across the street and picked out a roll or two at Sakana-Ya.

Sorry, Fresco. I know you're trying, but I wasn't feelin it. A half star for friendly service.

My rating of Fresco Tortillas Grill:

Review: Empire Brewing Co

Name: Empire Brewing Co
Address: 120 Walton St, Syracuse, NY
Neighborhood: Downtown (Armory Square)
Website: www.empirebrew.com
Menu: View Menu
Cuisine: Traditional Bar Food, Creole, Tex-Mex
Restaurant Hours: Monday-Thursday 11:30 AM to 10 PM, Friday-Saturday 11:30 AM to 11 PM, Sunday 11:30 AM to 3 PM, 3:30 PM to 9 PM
Bar Hours: Monday-Thursday 11:30 AM to Last Call, Friday-Saturday 11:30 AM to 2 AM, Sunday 11:30 AM to Last Call
Parking: On-Street
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Alcohol: Full Bar

With a serious burger urge in my stomach all day, I thought I would venture over to Empire Brewing Co in Armory Square. Located on Walton Street in what feels like a hip, underground bunker, Empire is notoriously home to the some of the best Syracuse-made beer in the city. Inside you get a cool view of everything going on at this place, from the chefs cooking in the open kitchen and the glassed-in brewing facility, to the bartenders serving freshly brewed ales and patrons of all ages enjoying themselves. On a given day, you can find roughly 6 to 8 styles of Empire's beer on tap as well as live music on Thursdays and Fridays with 1/2 price deals at the bar all day on Thursdays (1/2 price on Empire beers, 1/2 price on wines by the glass, and 1/2 price cocktails). Don't miss their Happy Hour too (or Hoppy Hour). Times are n/a so just call for details.

Not only is Empire Brewing Company the first business in Central New York to have 100% New York State produced renewable energy, they also pride themselves on using local ingredients whenever possible - such as Gianelli Sausage, Big Mama's Cheesecake, and Plainville Farms to name just a few. Yes, they deserve serious props for this.

The beer and wine selection are both good with a nice range of house-made beer selections and a good offering of New York State wines. If you're new to the beer at Empire (or have fallen in love with them already) they offer $15 growlers for getting beer to-go and a $10 "beer sampler" where you can try a small glass of each of their brews.

There's a lot going on with the menu. I was merely up for a burger and fries, but they really have a bunch of different dishes here - to the point where I think they could clean it up a bit. I liked the way it was designed and organized (small plates, big plates, etc...) but the concepts were conflicting and a bit confusing if you're trying to gauge what type of cuisine they actually offer. For example, they serve calamari, pizza, gumbo, burgers, Indonesian sauces, pasta dishes, burritos, ribs, and lobster egg rolls - among other things. Being proud to serve local ingredients is great, but I think they could fine-tune the genre a bit, just so the overall menu concept(s) seems a bit more concise and directed - rather than a jumble of different kinds of random foods.

The order...

India Pale Ale: $5
Jambalaya: $6br> Bentley Burger (w/side of Fresh-Cut Fries): $9br> Total Money Spent with Tax & Tip: $25.60

Without sounding like I'm tooting my own horn, I consider myself to be fairly well-rounded in terms of liking different kinds of beers. And yet I honestly have a hard time enjoying, much less finishing, any beer that I've ever had at Empire. There's something about their beers where they leave a very bitter, uncomfortable and lingering aftertaste in your mouth. And the IPA on this occasion was no different. Hoppy and citrusy, but with an extremely annoying bitterness that made it hard for me to want to finish it. Though, perhaps this whole issue is just a personal preference. At any rate, I did not like it.

Jambalaya: a rice dish with shrimp, chicken, andouille sausage, and smoked ham seasoned with spices and topped with a homemade Creole sauce.

I wasn't really a fan of this. It was spicy an all but the flavors just didn't line up. The ingredients in Jambalaya are supposed to interlock and blend together (like a stew, for instance) and this just tasted like 5 or 6 ingredients thrown on top of each other with some spices mixed in. Not only that, but the rice was very overcooked and tasted mushy. And baby shrimps? C'mon. There was just no love in this (yes, you should be able to taste the love in Jambalaya). Also, cooling down the spiciness of this dish with their IPA didn't work for me and actually made the heat linger more. Empire should seriously consider putting beer pairings after each dish on the menu. For example, I think something like the Downtown Brown in this case would have accompanied the Jambalaya a bit better instead of the IPA. Not only would this suggestion be good in terms of taste, but it might give some initial thoughts to those who are unfamiliar with their styles of beer and what they taste like before ordering what they want to eat.

Pictured here is the Bentley Burger. Grilled, black angus beef with chipotle mayo, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions.

I have to say that I liked this burger a lot and it was a pleasant surprise after being fairly disappointed with my beer and Jambalaya. Juicy and perfectly cooked angus beef with the right amount of fresh lettuce, onions, spicy mayo, melted cheese, and a layer of large, creatively-cut pickles. No ketchup (I love ketchup on a burger) but they give you enough in a small bowl on the side for your fries so I was able to use some of that. I wasn't crazy about the fries. I think I expected somewhat larger cut fries - maybe even steak fries - but these were kind of a let-down. Fairly dry and bland. And for the record, I hate when fries have that weird breading on the outside (you know what I'm talking about). Something happened to American's perception of fries sometime during the early-1990's and I put the blame on Burger King. Give me some normal, lightly salted fries with the skin on and I'm a happy camper.

A few things of note...

Service was slow. It was a Sunday night, not incredibly busy, and yet it took a good 15 minutes to get the check after the waiter disappeared.

They also have a "Blues Brunch" menu served from 11:30 AM to 3 PM on weekends with breakfast pizza, breakfast fajitas, and other creative brunch dishes.

Overall, I love the decor of Empire, love that they proudly use local ingredients, love that they are keen about energy usage, and love that they make their own beer, but everything that I ordered fell flat - with the only strong point being the burger itself. I would go back for it again but would rather try my luck with a different beer, different side, and a different appetizer choice.

My rating of Empire Brewing Co: