Mac’s Meals

By James McElwee ’10
The Roundup

Mi Patio is a Mexican restaurant located on the southeast corner of Osborn and 7th Avenue.

It provides pretty good food for a fairly reasonable price.

The decor inside of Mi Patio leaves much to be desired.  It is annoyingly “Mexi-Kitch.”  What I mean by this is that the walls are painted to look like cracked adobe and the ceiling is covered in fake, hanging tropical birds, some wearing sombreros.

However, none of this is an essential ingredient to good food.

When the restaurant is full, as it usually is, it gives off a really great vibe.  Most of the people are enjoying their food and the waiters are all knowledgeable and have been working there for a long time.

While some may be tired of “Americanized” Mexican food, it really seems to work.  Mi Patio features quite a large menu filled with “classics” like tacos, burritos, enchiladas and other such dishes.  But it also features a few almost strange sounding dishes like the “baked fresh spinach chimi,” Gyros chimi and Baja chicken burro.

The Baja chicken burro, a deep-fried and oven-baked burrito with a cream cheese sauce, is actually good.  I was skeptical at first, but everything works and combines to taste original and delicious.

Not having sampled either the fresh spinach chimi or the Gyros chimi I will have to defer to the good people at Yelp.com (a great place to read up on restaurants) who seem to think that both are pretty good.

It might be worthwhile to give them a try.  I know I will.

Pretty much everything else on the menu is good.  While it’s hard to go wrong with things like tacos, burritos and enchiladas, Mi Patio seems to excel at those and other dishes like tostadas and carne asada.

A lot of the filling in the dishes can be overcooked; luckily the filling also includes some sort of good tasting sauce that can cover up a lot of the overcooked feeling.

The Chile Relleno I sampled did not have the seeds cleaned out, and each plate is accompanied by less than inspired piles of rice, beans and a small pile of lettuce.  Presentation aside, the food was still good.

While Mi Patio may have a few problems, it’s still a great place to have a meal and gets a 3.5 out of 5.