I have a confession. I am Chipotle‘s biggest fan. As in, the brand owned by the McDonald’s corporation. As in, the big-as-your-head, freshyly-mixed burritos over on Lancaster Drive served an the Aztec-industrial chic dining room.
Well, I’ve found something to assuage my guilt.
Last Friday we found ourselves heading back to Salem from Woodburn after a slightly out-of-the-way Craigslist pickup. We had our stomachs set on Word of Mouth, but just as we drove past the entrance towards the parking lot, a server flipped the front door sign from open to “closed.” Wah wah wah.
So we headed to Venti’s. And our large-lobed, big-hearted Venti guy cocked his head apologetically and pointed us towards the bar stairs because our favorite stop for crunchy hippie food closes its upstairs kitchen at 9:00 (they do offer a limited bar menu, which while delicious, doesn’t quite fit the bill for your green curry cravings).
Wah wah wah.
Um… gelato? Um… pizza? Um… Chipotle?
Ta da! La Perla, the slightly bare bones but strangely elegant little Mexican place in the Reed Opera House — the one with the best tourist location in all of Salem — stays open until 11:00 p.m. on Fridays.
Pretty rockin’ for a place that doesn’t even serve alcohol.
We kinda love La Perla because there are always teenagers hanging out there — as if this place, in offering no beer or wine or even a margherita, can be a good, cheap place for teens to hang out on a Friday night. When I was a kid, all we had was TCBY.
But we really love La Perla because the food is the kind of great Mexican street food that you could get from the best street vendors in Latin America — crisp, fresh vegetables, perfectly spiced, salsa made fresh a couple of times a day, fish tacos, which, while not as big as your head, are so flavorful that you’ll wonder where the owner Marco gets his tomatoes in winter.
And a taco costs 99 cents. I always order two and then end up ordering another one.
I drink my tacos down with a big glass of horchata, a cloyingly sweet and surprisingly addictive rice milk that I haven’t seen offered in a Mexican restaurant since I lived in State College, PA.
We left La Perla around 10:30. The streets were empty, a soft rain had started, and we were full. Happily, merrily, exhaustingly full.
And they have great WiFi service! Although they only have a couple of outlets to plug in. Tacos and internet = awesome!
We cannot say enough wonderful things about La Perla. It seems we always find one great Mexican restaurant to call our own everywhere we move, and this is it.
I love La Perla, in fact we used to go to eat there and then get our beer and Venti’s before they moved to their new digs.
La Perla is where we hosted the Ten Taco Throwdown, and the subsequent Twenty Taco Challenge, where our poor high school student had to stop at 12 and a half….but he did survive track practice that afternoon.
One of our employees holds our circle-of-friends records at 14 tacos.
I have heard of this ten taco throwdown… I am sending my husband next time, he will school you all mwa ha ha.