Los Alamos Cocina — Restaurant in Kansas City

Staycation is something we always look forward to...but it does have a price to pay on Saturday morning. Saturday mornings require spicy food.

This year I planned ahead and made plans to try out Los Alamos Cocina. Uber drops us off at corner of 17th and Summit, just a perfect morning out today in KC. Los Alamos is diagonal across street from Blue Bird Diner, it's almost easy to walk right past...but dont walk past 1667 Summit Dr. In fact, make it a point to stop there on Saturday or Sunday and I'll tell you why.

Several reasons...first and foremost, the food, omg the food. We had the chillaquilles which come with 2 over easy eggs, plus we added carnitas and a side of the spicy pork chili.

Let me back up a bit, this is a true family run restaurant and within a few minutes of ordering, the owner is out and we are treated to why we love getting out to eat...we are making another friend. Just that fast. He knows his customers, they know him and everybody is there coming in to break bread. We both lament over the closing years ago of the original California Taqueria on the Blvd which got brought up as I told him it reminded me of that place. A big display counter with all the days offerings right there for you.

He asks me if i ordered menudo (which I love...but menudo is either really really great or not at all). Lynda notices everybody has some menudo, which at many small family run places, is a weekend treat. The place smells incredible, I can smell the menudo...my order of chillaquilles is cooking up and it smells incredible, ok what the heck, let's have a bowl so Lynda can try it.

Yup, it's in the really, really great category. Deep rich broth with that delicious honeycomb tripe, hominy, fresh onion...this is the best menudo I've had.

Our chillaquilles come over and it's a huge serving that we split. The carnitas were done right. Lots of flavor, edges all nice and crispy but still tender. Broke that easy over egg and let the yolks mix all together with the creme, add a little spicy pork chili on top for good measure. I developed a system, a little bite of those homemade beans plus a chunk of carnitas with chillaquilles all egg yolked up (is that a real term?)...I dunno if yolked is a real word but that system of all those flavors one forkfull at a time is one of the best Mexican breakfasts you will find in KC.

We were in breakfast bliss.

Even bought a bottle of the good Mexcian vanilla. If you do any baking at all, this stuff is like no other. Such a cool little market and restaurant. Cant wait to go back to try the other items. And yes, I'm already...

We found this little joint on a weekend trip to KCMO and what a freaking find it was! First of all, this is a small market/restaurant combo place. As SOON as we walked in, we were greeted by the young man in my picture, Benito Juarez Jr, (seriously, that´s his name!) He was cheerful, friendly, super helpful, professional and genuinely kind. He treated us and everyone else who came in behind us, exactly the same way. He is the manager, his family owns the store and his little sister was at the register. So the food....I had a bowl of the BEST menudo I've eaten since I left San Diego and we make some damn good menudo there. I asked for pata and the cook sliced a ton of the meat off the bone and put it in my bowl. Lots of hominy, tripe and absolutely delicious. One of the things I've noticed in Missouri is that the Mexican food I've tried is either super salty or no salt at all and this was not the case here. The soup was very flavorful, as good as my moms! You order at the counter, get a drink from one of the coolers if you want one and go sit down, your food is brought to you by one of the helpers or Benito. This is NOT a traditional taco shop. Their specialties are the many stewed dishes sitting in the steamer table. There is pork, beef, chicken, beans, rice, tamales and combo plates. I wasn't sure if the pork I wanted to try was too spicy, Benito was kind enough to give me a sample, who does that at a Mexican restaurant? There was a lull in the flow while we were there and Benito never stopped cleaning, sweeping, wiping the tables. This is truly like coming to eat at someones home. A+++++++...

Worst experience in a Mexican Restaurant, Waited 2 hours and half for my food to be served for me and my family we order the carne asada with shrimp, they had 6 staff working on the kitchen just messing around and talking and talking arguing with each other about who would make our food, server was worried about us leaving since we had already waited along time and kept going back and forward on telling the cook staff about our order, we got our food was 1 start meat was really salty, beans where cold and had a raw taste and rice was uncooked, we told server about it he apologized and mention two us that he was going to not charge us for one plate of Our order, once we got up and pay at the counter owner was really mad and said to us that he had 23 years on business and that since server told us that he wasn’t going to charge us the one of our plates that server was going to be responsible of paying it for us, I told him server was the best thing he had because he was doing his job, the problem was he had 6 people On the kitchen and they where just playing around and know one wanted to take the other, and that they took 2 hours and half to serve us, he was rude and gave us attitude and also charge us fees on our receipt for service charge and deli tax that he made up on our receipt, unprofessional not only we got a bad service and food but we also got charge for extra stuff. Would not recommend anyone...