El Real

This isn't even a blog post it's a public service announcement. El Real, located at 1201 Westheimer, is the worst Mexican food restaurant in the history of the universe. I don't mean that in the cute, I just don't want you to go because it's my favorite restaurant way I told you Jus' Mac is a terrible restaurant. El Real is actually terrible. And let's just take a minute, can we guys? How can you mess up Mexican food? Mexican food has to be the easiest food in the world to get right. Have you ever had bad Mexican food? OK. Have you ever had bad Mexican food south of Oklahoma and west of Louisiana? No. The answer is no. Because nobody has ever made bad Mexican food in Texas; at the worst, it's average Mexican food. All you have to do is put lots of cumin, salt, and jalapeno into everything and it's average Mexican food! But I don't think they did any of that! I don't think they put any spices in anything! Even their salsa didn't have any flavor! I'm sending my father to talk to the executive chef he'll set him right. (And that's the other thing! The guy who owns this restaurant owns two others, maybe you've heard of them: REEF and LITTLE BIG'S! Two excellent restaurants! How could he have gone so terribly, heart-breakingly wrong???)

Let's just get started. So I walk into the restaurant and the hostess says hi and I say hi and she says (I assume) "Table for two?" Only it comes out all garbled, so I reply, "I'm sorry?" and she looks at me like I'm an idiot and replies, "I said hi?" But I SWEAR TO YOU, she didn't say hi! We'd already gotten past that portion of our conversation! I mean I'm not going to stand here and pretend like I'm the sharpest tack in the box, but when somebody says hi to me, I can understand what it means. Not only can I understand what it means, but I've lived in America for 21 entire years. When somebody says hi to me, it's no longer a mental reaction to reply; it's muscle memory. I couldn't not respond if I wanted. It's not a question of understanding what they say! So my point is, I'm NOT an idiot (usually) and the hostess is a LIAR! That's NOT what she said! -90

With that terrible entry into the restaurant, you think, surely they must do something great to make it all better and bring me back to their side. After all I'm a famous restaurant reviewer they have to have something up their sleeve. FALSE! I entered into their main dining area and do you want to hear something terrible? They only have TWO BOOTHS and both of them are for large parties! -16 What if you're at the restaurant with your boyfriend and you just want to look shady and wear sunglasses inside and wear turtlenecks and pretend like you're a European spy? You can't! You have to be there with at least eight other people to enjoy that privilege! It's terrible and I hate it! Plus it gets worse! They have stupid chairs at all of their tables that are boring and just look like regular stupid chairs, but in the upstairs dining room for stupid "we want to reserve a whole upstairs dining room because our party is too large for the ONLY TWO BOOTHS in the whole restaurant" people, and they're so much cooler! Guys, the upstairs dining room has really cool looking chairs like you'd have in your actual dining room in your actual house, and geez, why don't the regular plebeians get to sit in them? Why did we have to sit in the stupid boring ones? I feel like a second class citizen! -31 You know what else the upper dining room gets that regular folks don't? A swordfish. The upper dining room has a swordfish on their wall and we on the ground floor only get to LOOK AT IT. They could touch it if they wanted. Must be nice, rich upper crust upper dining room snobs! -12

OK but look it's a terrible restaurant with terrible food but do you want to hear something that is actually pretty clever? OK it's really clever. So El Real is in a building that used to be an old movie theater, and then when that closed down it turned into a Hollywood video. A rich history of films and the people who enjoy them! And on the wall of El Real, they play movies! Don't you think that's a really cool nod to the history of the building? I feel like they're celebrating even more than the building actually but the whole geography of the area. But I'm still mad about that hostess so I'm only giving them back +2 for how actually cool and neat that is.

Anyways. Feel free to never eat at El Real, but if you're hungry I do definitely recommend the owner's other two restaurants (maybe not Little Big's it's pretty good food but there's something about sliders that seems shady to me stay tuned for my review). If you have anything really nice to say to me, email me at arbitrarycriticism@live.com!