the skinny on cancun: a very brightly decorated tex-mex restaurant with slightly higher than average prices but also slightly better than average quality food and a slightly broader menu
you may be a little alarmed when entering cancun. the poorly maintained parking lot with faded signage and the somewhat shabby exterior do not make a good first impression, and on entry when you look to your left, there is a passageway sealed with plain old plywood, like you'd see in the windows and doorways of an abandoned building. truth is, cancun occupies restaurant space that is built into a hotel that was closed down some time ago. if you can get by all that, though, i think you're in for a pretty good experience here compared to other americanized mexican restaurants in the area.
the interior is very, very, very colorful. each table and each seatback is covered with wood carvings of various vacation-in-mexico type scenes, and they are all painted in bright cheery primary colors. there is a huge window on the main dining room that faces the west, and cancun has had this painted over lightly with a mayan style pyramid, and when the sun begins to set this area becomes a glowing mayan pyramid. you might find this very weird, but i
found this very cool
service is very friendly and very fast. a few of the wait staff seem to struggle with their english, and depending on how complex your order is they may have to call someone over who is better versed in english to help get the order right. most of the wait staff are very good communicators and i have not yet had any of them write down my order, no matter how complex, and in every case my order has been right. they've been very friendly and have answered all my questions
whether lunch or dinner, meals start out with the ubiquitous chips and salsa, but they do three things a little better than many of their competitors - 1) the salsa is excellent, very smooth, slightly sweet, with just a little bit of heat. 2) the chips are fried fresh in house every day, and 3) the salsa is served in a small carafe with a wooden bowl for each diner, which means you have your own bowl and without worrying about your dining companions can add hot sauces as you like and can double dip to your heart's content.
topping their lunch menu is a combo (currently 6.50) with choice of two typical tex-mex items (enchilada, burrito, taco, tostada, tamale, chile relleno, etc etc) with either rice or beans. my favorite of these items - by far - has been the chile relleno. it is a poblano chile (which is usually not very spicy-hot) stuffed with your choice of cheese, seasoned ground beef, or both, then battered and deep fried and covered with red enchilada sauce. i recommend beef and cheese, but any of the configurations is very good. the chicken mix they use in the enchilada is quite good - mostly well seasoned tender chicken with very little vegetable filler. the burrito is a better value than the enchilada because it is bigger and more heavily stuffed, but they use a flour tortilla as a wrapper in place of the corn tortilla sued on the enchilada. i like that they had a tamale at all - many restaurants like this don't offer tamales - but it was disappointing, with a shredded pork filling with virtually no flavor. all i could taste was the masa, which was pretty good. still, this was better than the hard shell taco with ground beef, because the beef (the same ground beef that works so well in the chile relleno) was seasoned only with (a lot of) salt - no mexican spice or chile flavor at all.
i have also had the chimichanga when it was a daily lunch special (5.99, 6.99 regular price), and it was very tasty but did not retain the signature crunch a really good chimichanga should still have even after being topped with enchilada and/or cheese sauce
i don't however recommend the fajitas. the meat is listed as grilled, but when i have received this dish the only grilling evident on the meat appeared to have occurred when it was set on the "sizzling plate" as it is brought to the dining room. the meat does no appear to have been marinated or seasoned. i don't mind so much that the flour tortillas included look to be commercially produced elsewhere, but i do mind that cheese is not included (1.00 extra if you want it), since it is included everywhere else i have ordered this dish.
the offer various plates of nachos, and they are very tasty but not very share-able, at least how they serve them. instead of using shredded cheese and melting it atop the chips, they ladle on a very thin (but very tasty) queso dip/sauce. the resulting plate gets very soggy very quickly, and soon enough devolves into knife and fork work. if you want a plate of nachos to share, and yes, this sounds strange - ask for the chips on the side, so you and your companion(s) can dig still-crisp chips into the pile of cheese sauce and other nacho toppings.
i was surprised to see that in addition to the usual mexican-american standards, they have a number of seemingly more authentic mexican dishes, as well as several dinners featuring seafood, mostly shrimp and tilapia i have not tried any of these yet, but appreciate these additional options on the menu
cancun's prices are in general about a dollar higher per meal than you might expect to see at a similar eatery, but they do have a 2 items each day of the week (1 list for lunch with 2 items per day, 1 list for dinner with 2 items per day) that they take a dollar off on that day only, so your best value is generally to stick to those specials. if you are going there as a party of two or more, make sure to print a coupon off their website - it has been 3 dollars off two lunches or 5 dollars off 2 dinners for at least a couple of years now.
update 20150922: it appears cancun has moved from their current location (inside a closed hotel) to a smaller space in surrey square next to chipotle