rosa's café & tortilla factory

mixed feelings, but read on please. this wont replace my lifelong relationship with el fenix, and it wont win any awards for its culinary achievements, it is a good spot for a quick fix oftex-mexfor a reasonable price. the place is always clean, bright, cheerful in decor with the perfect mexican festive music playing. the food is always very quick, hot and tasteful, if not outstanding. probably a good place to stop if you have a large party, or a busload of kids. i have had the large deluxe mexican plate combo that consist of "w/ guac, taco, ench, tamale, tostada" and some hot flour tortillas. with a drink i think it was around $10. again, it wont replace el fenix, or any number of finer mexican food restaurants (luna de noche, nicos, mi cocina, etc...), but it has its place. easily a large step above pancho's for food quality.

school cafeteria grade tex mex, ho hum. rosa's cafe is a texas based chain with home in dusty old lubbock, which started as a tortilla factory. it evolved into a family oriented chain of restaurants, where you actually walk in and sit down to get the same identical fare as you would at a taco bell or grade school cafeteria. all very generic and mild, low priced and aimed squarely at the family dining experience. the menu is easily identified with giant backlit photos representing each dish, so reading is not required. portions and flavor is what you might expect from a visit to any elementary school lunch line. so is the service - there is none. just walk thru the cafeteria style ramp to the counter, mumble a number associated with a picture, and move to the cashier. if feeding your children is the goal, this place works out just fine. if you actually want flavor in your tex-mex, even taco bueno has an edge over this place, but here you get to sit at a table instead of havingtex-mexwiped all over your car interior from a drive thru. it's not agave grill - heck its not even anamias (but close), but for the price, no complaints. adults can go to a realtex-mexplace, this is like burger king of texmex designed for kid palates and low-budget wallets.
not great, not awful, take your kids and save a buck.

mark robbins