Restaurant Review: Los Arcos

How are you? I am thrilled that it is Friday! How exciting! And next week is only a three day week? yayyyyyyyyyyyyyy! I just wanted to give a big thank you to both Tina at Carrots 'N' Cake and Sabrina at Rhodey Girl Tests for featuring me on their blogs this week. You both have such amazing blogs(I KNOW everyone reading agrees), I feel honored to have a little guesty type spot!! Blog lurve to you!

So its Friday and you know what that means-Charleston, SC area restaurant review! We had originally been deciding between two fabulous sounding restaurants when we changed our mind and decided we wanted Mexican! We use to live near a Mexican restaurant we really loved. Tonight, we went out on a limb to try a new place- Los Arcos. So what did we eat? I was a little naughty tonight on the food front ;)-

Chori-Queso Dip:


My Dinner- Los Arcos Salad: Carrots, tomatoes, grilled chicken breast and grated cheese on a bed of lettuce and fresh spinach

Josh's Dinner: #5. One beef and one cheese enchilada, rice and beans.

Sorry the pics are dark- we were near a LOT of people and decided to forgo the flash!

My Review:

The decor inside the restaurant was very fun! We got there around 7 pm and had to wait about 15 minutes to be seated (not too bad). The waiter was at our table right as we sat down and was already taking our drink orders and delivering fresh chips and salsa. The chips were perfect- crispy and not greasy. The salsa was spiced just right and was tasty! Josh really loves chorizo and was thrilled when he saw the dip! The dip was just...incredible! Totally rich with just the right about of kick. I was excited to get my salad but not excited by the large amount of cheese! The lettuce and spinach were fresh and the chicken was perfectly seasoned! It was a very good salad- especially for a Mexican restaurant! Overall, I thought this restaurant was great! If you love Mexican food- this is definitely for you.

Josh's Review:

So apparently I am a liar.

Let me tell you how this week started – this may be a bit untraditional of me if you’ve read any of my previous reviews on Erica’s blog, as I tend to be concise. Namely because I enjoy people who are concise. This week’s happenings call for a few words, and about 10 minutes of my time to spell out to truly appreciate tonight’s dinner.

The week started Monday when I was extremely excited to get the new Noel Gordin CD (which is incredible by the way), and I knew it would be a great week with sweet tunes for the ride to and from work and the gym. Fast-forward to Wednesday when I told Millie, the nice lady from the attorney’s office for the Maryland Comptroller of the Treasury, that she had made my week when she said pointed me to the forms necessary for exemption from nonresident state withholding taxes on our MD house – (cliff’s notes: great news for E & J). However, I was quick to learn this was a premature presentation of the “made my week” award; little did I know we would be going to Los Arcos for dinner Friday.

Let me first say this: Mexicans make great food. Los Arcos was the real deal. Back in MD we had Monterey’s, which was destined to be “that awesome Mexican restaurant we used to go to” from the first 5 minutes of the car ride down to South Carolina. I knew there were going to be great restaurants on the horizon for us, but was definitely going to miss the Monterey’s restaurant. To give you an idea of how ridiculously logical Mexicans are in their eateries.... even here I was able to order “combination #5” which was the SAME “combination #5” from Monterey’s. Irony? Luck? No, that’s logical and smart. My dinner consisted of a plate of fun that created a smile on my face and a siesta in my mouth. Mexicans have their stuff together when it comes to dishes – simple. Meat. Cheese. Beans. Salsa. Tortillas. Period. They have managed to create approximately 8,466 different combinations of deliciousity out of these 5 ingredients. To an industrial engineer, that’s music to my ears (well, music to my mouth). What enabled this gracious score however was their extra effort in offering an appetizer like “Chor-Queso” – genius. To be honest, most anything mixed with melted cheese is bound for greatness, but chorizo? Come on! That’s Pulitzer Prize worthy if you ask me. Then to top it off, the salsa for the ever-popular-amongst-Mexican-restaurant “unlimited tortilla chips” (yet another reason for eatery Hall of Fame induction), was almost pureed. For a guy who loves salsa flavor but isn’t fond of chunky tomato pieces, this is the encore to the previously mentioned music to my mouth billboard topper.

In addition to the obviously fantastic food, I won’t deny that the geographic convenience played into my rating this week as well – Los Arcos is within the Mount Pleasant Town Center fairly close to our curent location, which means great things for Los Arcos, and not-so-great things for the E & J family bank account. Fortunately, dinner at most Mexican restaurants is still cheaper than a gallon of gas. What happened to $1.25 a gallon? Damn you Chavez.... you deserve this economic crisis.

Overall Rating: 7.5/8 (the highest yet!)

On a side note, gas down here is $1.89 a gallon! How exciting!

Frank's Review:

They brought me a new nylabone home so I don't care about the stupid restaurant ;)