The best of the American-style Mexican restaurants around the area, La Carreta is the Mandeville location of a Hammond-based chain. Its menus have kept pace with the news dishes introduced by the many small Mexican cafes that have opened in the past few years. La Carreta has been quick to pick up on the best of those and prepare them credibly, in a mainstream restaurant environment.
La Carreta is a small, rapidly-expanding chain of seven Mexican restaurants in Southeast Louisiana. Saul Rubio, native of Queretaro, Mexico, came to Hammond to go to school, and worked in the usual capacities in Mexican restaurants. In 1998, at 36, he opened his first restaurant in Hammond. Almost from the beginning, the restaurant has not only expanded its reach but also its menu. La Carreta has no connection with Carreta's Grill, another chain of Mexican restaurants in the same region.
The walls are dark, but the lighting gives the tables in the two main rooms a pleasing brightness. A few outdoor tables are under the trees. The service staff is friendly and responsive, and may even be too quick to bring the food out. The new Covington location is a bit smaller, and its outdoor dining area is less bucolic, what with Causeway Boulevard's thick traffic.
If you're going to have an appetizer, split it with someone else--it's too much food. Also, tell the server to hold back on your entree until you're finished the first course.
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