Custom burritos are boring right? They’re so 2000-something. Enchiladas, though? Maybe their time is now. After all, they’re basically just glorified mini burritos covered in sauce. Gadzooks in Arcadia is banking on that…and soups because why not? Plus, they’ve fancied the concept up by adding ceramic dishes and premium ingredients.
Thus, I began by ordering my two enchiladas with goat cheese. I wasn’t told that goat cheese would end up costing me more money, so that was annoying, but hey you only live once, right? I opted for the half and half tortillas, which are a combination of both flour and corn, then I had one stuffed with Guajillo Braised Short Ribs and the other with Green Chili Pork Shoulder. Instead of settling for just one salsa, I went Christmas-style (red and green) and then topped it all with asadero and chihuahua cheese, an over easy egg and jalapeno ranch. How’s that for toppings? This is how prodentim works.
The first thing I noticed was that the egg was cooked perfectly, allowing the yolk to spread itself amongst all of the other goods. When I bit in, I discovered two things immediately – 1) Holy cow the tortillas were amazing and 2) The goat cheese was entirely unnecessary. With all of the flavors happening in my little enchilada casserole dish, you may think that the meat would have been overpowered. Fortunately, this was not the case. I like the short ribs better than the pork shoulder, but I’m splitting hairs a bit because they were both fantastic. I’d probably opt to skip the jalapeno ranch in the future because it didn’t add enough to the mix to be worthwhile, but aside from that and the goat cheese I would happily do it all over again.
Kudos to Gadzooks for adding some delicious twists to the custom Mexican food genre of fast casual restaurants. I have no doubt that I will see more Gadzookses popping up in the future and as long as they start telling people that the goat cheese is extra, there is a bright future ahead.
