The West Bank continues to be undersupplied with restaurants for a business lunch (unless the business is around the Gretna Courthouse). One bright spot on the West Bank dining scene is the growth in the number of Mexican restaurants. Most of those have that certain Third World charm. El Mesquite, however, is well beyond a mom-and-pop operation, with professional service and nice surroundings. And food good enough to make an impression on someone. It's been there about a year, but it's still not well known--although everybody on the West Bank knows the location as the extinct Visko's.
In a time when most new Mexican restaurants are very modest, El Mesquite will put you in the mid of the kind of Tex-Mex restaurants in that big parish west of the Sabine River. While the cooking here is a bit Americanized, it is much less so than most of the city's other Mexican places, and certainly more appealing than the Mexican chains. The menu offers tremendous variety, and not just by filling the pages with combo platters.
A family-owned restaurant that opened in late 2009, El Mesquite took over the building famed for decades as Visko's seafood restaurant. They performed a light renovation to the building, fixing what the many past tenants had left behind.
Two main dining rooms have smaller ones attached here and there. They also have tables on a sort of deck outside. All are colorful and in fine repair. On Wednesday nights, there's a live band that packs the place. Other nights, it may also be full. The clientele is a fifty-fifty blend of Hispanic people and the larger West Bank community.
If something sounds like it could have come from a chain restaurant (spinach artichoke dip, for example), avoid it. Go for dishes you haven't had around New Orleans.
| Attitude | 2 |
|---|---|
| Environment | 1 |
| Hipness | 0 |
| Local Color | 1 |
| Service | 2 |
| Value | 2 |
| Wine | 0 |
