New sit-down offers taco Tuesday deal

By: Casey Durkin

Monday, August 24, 2009 - 10:52 PM

As the food choices in the Joe Crowley Student Union grew rapidly in the last year, a big question still needed to be answered: what about a restaurant? And right as it seemed like sitting down in the same place you ordered your food was a luxury that only student unions in Ivy Leagues have, Cantina Del Lobo answered the call.

Cantina Del Lobo, located on the third floor of the Joe Crowley Student Union, serves a variety of Mexican specials, such as, Taco Tuesday offers its patrons unlimited tacos for $7.99. Jilian Stenzel/Nevada Sagebrush

Cantina Del Lobo, situated on the third floor of The Joe, has an interesting yet familiar approach to seemingly obvious Americanized versions of Mexican favorites. If compared, it would easily raise above the ninth circle of Mexican food hell (Taco Bell) to the not so bad yet not so good purgatory (Chevy’s). Even Senor Dante wouldn’t have seen that coming.

Upon first going through the door of the assuredly blank and boring outside, you are promptly greeted by a familiar look and feel on the inside. This is definitely disheartening. Any person who goes to a Mexican food chain wants to be seductively showered with all of the spice and flavor of a faked American interpretation of Latin culture. This is commonly done through posters of Pancho Villa and hundreds of maracas, sombreros and dried out chili peppers tacked to the wall.

Cantina Del Lobo didn’t even try. The entire inside was pretty much a mixture of fine wood furniture and some blank walls with a couple of LCD lights thrown in. Granted this may be a result of how new it is, but that is still a major downer.

Another major yet expected downfall for this establishment is the fact that it doesn’t serve alcohol. After the news of the university’s moral confusion over having a distributor of booze on the establishment surfaced, though, it was kind of suspected that this wasn’t going to end with a happy song and a Corona. What was even more perplexing is that builders constructed something to replicate the look and feel of a bar, which is just plain sad.

Besides all the initial criticism, you should not be too dissuaded because the food definitely ties up all the loose ends. Though not the real thing, it definitely hits the high points of American Mexican restaurant chains.

Most of the food is made with good ingredients that one would find in any sit-down Mexican restaurant. You have the tasty yet familiar style of beans, rice, tacos, burritos, enchiladas, etc. that you can find at just about any restaurant with a waiter and a margarita happy hour. To be frank, this place IS Chevy’s but with a more modern sports-bar feel.

Another big thumbs up is the size of the menu. The menu is vast enough to incorporate all the key Mexican food power players plus about five different ways to prepare each food choice. This is enough for a person to be intrigued and consider going back as opposed to labeling it a mistake made in a hazy desperation for food.

If the review were to end here, Cantina Del Lobo would have earned a strong C rating, yet the restaurant had a wild card up their sleeve: Taco freaking Tuesday. Sure Del Lobo forgot to bring the atmosphere and booze, but what it did bring was possibly the most endearing trait any Mexican restaurant could bestow upon its college patrons.

For $8, a person can have unlimited free tacos. That is infinity tacos, people. One waitress even made a point of saying that one could sit down once the store opens and feast until closing, just to make everything clear. The only condition to this religious experience is that all tacos must be hard shell with either shredded beef or chicken and no tacos can be taken to go.

Some may say that there are much better Taco Tuesday-esqe deals out there, but some things need to be considered: After you pay, the tacos are unlimited instead of a reduced taco price, these are good tacos by American standards, and it is located right on campus, making it one of the only places with an unlimited food option, next to Downunder Cafe. These reasons should pretty much boost this food deal into the top three for the University of Nevada, Reno’s students.

So for the carbon copy of typical Mexican food mixed with a genius unlimited food deal, Cantina Del Lobo earns itself a B-, but has many easy ways to make improvements. With all this said, take your soft drink and bored restaurant experience and swallow it along with your pride so you can mark off a couple hours each Tuesday to indulge in your taco dreams.