Azteca: Family Mexican Restaurant

Sunday, July 7, 2019

Azteca: Family Mexican Restaurant

9429 S. 142nd Street, Omaha, NE

Where we went:

As we have said in the past, we both love Mexican food, and it has been a while since we have done a Mexican restaurant for this blog. So we decided tonight would be a Mexican night. But where to go? There are so many great Mexican locations in Omaha. A friend of ours, who’s step-mother is from Mexico, suggested a place she loves, and which we haven’t been to in a few years, Azteca.

What We Ate:

As with most Mexican restaurants, the first thing that is delivered to the table are free chips. However, Azteca takes this one step further, with providing three different toppings for your chips. A spicy, house made salsa, refried beans and what looked like finely chopped cabbage with herbs.

Eric tried to order a Chi Chi from the cocktail menu, but the waiter informed him that due to the bar being out of cream, they couldn’t make it. However, he said they DID have some hazelnut flavored cream. While hazelnut may not pair well with the pina colada-esque Chi Chi, Eric thought it might be a good substitute for the cream in the other cocktail he was eyeing: The Dirty Mother.

Kyle chose to have a classic dish, the Azteca Enchilada Supreme; an over sized enchilada with rice, beans and all the traditional enchilada fixings, covered in Azteca’s specialty sauce.

Eric went for one of their house specialties, Arroz con Pollo, a chicken dish with grilled peppers, and melted cheese over a bed of rice, and smothered in their house sauce. The fact that the menu description explicitly states it does NOT come with beans may have influenced his decision.

For dessert Azteca actually provides FREE sopapillas! However, we also ordered a Three Amigos, this is basically a sampler platter of their three dessert options, sopapillas, fried ice cream and flan.

The Food:

The chips and three types of dip were excellent. The house made dip was a bit spicier then Kyle normally likes but Eric loved it. This worked out well, as Kyle loved the beans, which is something Eric won’t touch. The cabbage had a unique and very subtle flavor, providing a nice mild option to contrast the spicy salsa.

Eric’s Dirty Mother was delicious! The hazelnut cream substitute went together with the Kahlua so well that Eric got a second glass! He felt it was almost like drinking dessert!

Kyle’s enchilada was to die for! Unlike most places, the rice and beans that come with the enchilada are actually cooked right into the enchilada itself. The vegetables were cool and fresh, while the meat and other ingredients were hot and flavorful. He should have taken a picture of the inside of his enchilada, but forgot.

As a self-professed sauce addict, the Arroz con Pollo was the PERFECT dish for Eric. This dish was absolutely swimming in delicious sauce, and Eric LOVED it. The sauce was actually very unique; it was more tomatoey than most mexican sauces, and almost more reminiscent of something you’d find on pasta at an italian place. But this sauce definitely paired well with all the other flavors in the dish. It was mild, but had an undercurrent of some kind of spice that Eric couldn’t quite identify. The chicken, peppers, and onions we delicious, though there wasn’t as much rice or cheese as Eric was expecting, the sauce made the dish amazing, regardless.

The desserts were, interesting. The sopapillas, usually Kyle’s favorite dessert, didn’t quite do it for him. Unlike other places, where they are light and fluffy, and come with honey to dip them in, these were more like chips, covered in cinnamon and sugar with a light honey glaze. Not quite what he had in mind. The strawberry drizzle on top, however did help give it a bit more flavor. Eric really enjoyed them. He thought they seemed lighter than other sopapillas which helped him consume more of them without feeling bloated (actually,it was just room for the other desserts), and he really loved the unique strawberry drizzle.

The fried ice cream also seemed a little off. It seemed more like a sprinkling of cornflakes than an actual fried coating. And not crispy fried corn flakes, but chewy and stale cornflakes. It was really odd and distracting. However, the vanilla ice cream (which Kyle thinks was actually french vanilla), was excellent, and we both just scraped off the cornflakes to enjoy the ice cream.

Then we get to the flan. Kyle is not a big fan of flan. It normally doesn’t have much taste, and the texture feels strange. However, we both thought this flan was very good. The spices gave it such a great flavor that the texture didn’t seem to be as big of an issue for Kyle.

The Atmosphere:

The Atmosphere at Azteca is a little different. First, the outside of the building isn’t anything special. Kyle feels like it resembles another type of restaurant, but he can’t remember (the way you can that an old building that might now be a doctors office was once a Pizza Hut). The dining room is split into two different sections: there’s the main dining room, but there’s also an area that looks like it was some kind of extension to the building. It almost feels like patio seating with the large windows, but it’s fully enclosed and indoors. Out in the parking lot there is a big, red, caboose. No one seems to have any idea why, and it has nothing to do with their theming.

Their theming is clear, just a bit subtle. By the front door, on the menu, and in a few places inside, the Aztec calendar can be seen as a clear symbol of the restaurant. There are also some artifacts and such placed in arch “windows” between the main dining room and the “patio-esque” expansion, and a really gorgeous sun sculpture hanging on the wall that radiates light from inside it.

However, this theme is not’ carried through to the rest of the restaurant, which is just kind of . . . normal. A few pictures on the walls, a few sombreros here and there. But overall, it looks like you could be inside a chain restaurant.

The one thing Kyle really hated were the chandeliers. These hideously ugly, late ‘80s, gold chandeliers with clear glass plates in front of the bulbs. Kyle just hates this look, anywhere. Not only are they ugly, but the way the spread the light just doesn’t do anything justice. They are obviously left over from whatever the building was before it became Azteca.

The one feature that did stand out to us, and this might just have been the time of day we went, and how the sun was shining through the windows, but the paint sparkled as if there were chunks of gold in it. The pictures do not do this feature justice. When you examine the walls closely, there are flecks of mica throughout, which produce this gorgeous, but subtle effect.

Service:

The service at Azteca is exceptional. We were seated right away, and our free chips and dip arrived almost immediately. Our waiter took our drink order and was back with the drinks quickly, not to mention being knowledgeable enough to suggest the delicious hazelnut cream substitute. The food came out must faster then we would expect at any restaurant. Our friend said that he has been coming to Azteca for over 20 years now, and that he sees a lot of the same wait staff he did back then. They must be doing something right to keep their wait staff around, and this shows in the quality and speed of their service.

In the End:

Azteca is a great Mexican restaurant that even those from Mexico can enjoy. Great drinks, great food and some of the best service around make Azteca a must visit place for dining in Omaha. From our visit we could say, skip the dessert, but you never know, it we may not have cared for it, but it may be right up your alley.