Los Amigos Mexican Restaurant (Gull Road)
5480 Gull RoadMy eating out is gotten pretty limited to weekends. No real reason. I just know I’m going to have an opportunity on Friday nights due to my overtime shift and I’ve been traveling for a second job on weekends so I’m getting to explore some new places.
This past Friday, my overtime shift kept me pretty close to Kalamazoo. I started the evening in Parchment. I wasn’t in a super big hurry to get there and had some time after my regular daytime shift.
There are a couple of really good places to eat in Parchment. Geno’s Pizza and Buen Provecho are always good stops but you should know me by now. I’m always looking for different places.
I decided to head out towards Gull Road to pick something to eat up there. My first thought was, of course, pizza. I knew I was going to be stopping on my way home from Mt. Pleasant the following night for pizza so I did something else instead. I picked tacos.
I stopped at Los Amigos Mexican Restaurant on the corner of Gull Road and Sprinkle Road in Comstock Township. This is was the third Los Amigos to open in the Kalamazoo area in 2015 following the original shop on Westnedge in Portage and the second location in the old Buffalo Wild Wings on Stadium Drive in Kalamazoo. There was also a fourth location that moved in to a building in front of the Lowes on Westnedge a little bit later. This particular building is an old Big Boy that closed in the early 2010s. A lot of former Big Boy’s still look like former Big Boy’s but the solarium, which is the main identifying architectural feature, was closed in so it’s not as obvious.
Los Amigos is a full service sit down restaurant and, while I had some time, I didn’t have time for that. I actually put my order in online before I left my office in downtown Kalamazoo assuming it would be ready by the time I made my way out there.
You walk in to the restaurant and kind of come right in to the dining room. The decor is Mexican themed but not over done like some Mexican joints. There are murals on the walls and the color scheme is bright but there are no paintings on the backs of booths, tables, or chairs. It’s a little more subdued. You know you’re in a Mexican restaurant but it’s not punching you in the face.
The host stand, which is also a check out stand and to-go order pickup is a left over from the days of Big Boy. It’s right next to another door which serves as the exit. I told the guy working my name and he picked up a bag sitting on the ledge next to him with my food. I grabbed it and headed to my job site to eat while I still had some time.
I ordered what has become my usual Mexican restaurant order lately. Four steak tacos and an order of fries. The cost was a little over $20 which, unfortunately, has become pretty common for tacos.
I started with the fries when I got in the car. To be honest, I don’t expect much from fries from a Mexican restaurant. It’s not really a Mexican food so they get a pass. These were pretty standard frozen restaurant fries and there was a pretty large to-go container full of them. They were put in a container with no air vents though so they kind of steamed a bit and became a bit soggy. Again, I don’t have high expectations when I order fries from a Mexican place. I’m just looking for something to compliment the tacos.
The taco order had to be a little bit weird. I noticed that if I ordered three tacos, the price was cheaper. But I wanted four tacos. So I ordered the three tacos and put that in a cart together….then went back and ordered a single taco so I could get four. It ended up saving me almost three bucks.
Instead of just packing them all together…because they were all steak tacos, they gave me separate orders. The single taco came in a smaller container where it laid out flat. Two warm tortillas topped with steak, cilantro, and onion.
The other three tacos were packaged together in their own container. They were the same as the one packaged by itself but they were formed more in to taco shapes. All four of the tacos were delicious. They only came with a green sauce and no red sauce so I did something unusual and added the green. It doesn’t have the kick I like with the red sauce but it worked to add a little moisture and a little flavor to the meat.
To my surprise, there was also chips and salsa in the bag. I know you get that when dining in at Los Amigos but I wasn’t expecting it on a to-go order. I thought about using some of that salsa on the tacos but I wanted it for the chips. The salsa was a really thin restaurant style sauce and the chips were a little salty and worked perfectly to pick up all of the flavor from the salsa. This was an added bonus to my meal that I wasn’t expecting.
I rarely, if ever, do sit down Mexican restaurants because all of the meals come with rice and beans…and that’s a waste for me. I much prefer taquerias where I can grab a stack of tasty tacos. Los Amigos is much more of a sit down Mexican restaurant but the take out option works well for me. I can grab some tacos…and fries and have a delicious meal. I know Friday is usually pizza night but this worked out really well.
