Mark C.'s Profile

A popular, busy Spanish-themed restaurant in downtown Racine serving a variety tapas and paellas, plus several entrees.  Our paella was disappointing, but most of the tapas selections were good enough, and a few were excellent.

Service was professional, despite the full house on both visits.

For details, see my full review:
http://www.czerniec.co...

A nice little family place with some very good tacos -- especially the steak tacos at $1.75 each or $6.95 for a dinner of three with rice and beans.

Check out the recent Journal Times story about the restaurant: http://tinyurl.com/2va2ok

Update: Beginning in March 2008, they are also open on Sundays.

Finding ourselves on Milwaukee's South Side, we decided to try Taqueria Azteca at about 4:30 this afternoon -- a rainy, windy Sunday. I was looking forward to some spicy, satisfying food and a little culinary creativity.

The building was bigger than I expected, with patio seating on a deck along the west side of the building, and three rooms inside. The odd dining hour found the place dead empty. A few more customers started arriving after 5, but the restaurant was only serving until 6.

While a dining room father back was done in dark panelling, ours was brighter and definitely suggested Mexico, with walls painted in several strong hues and ornamented by suns and strawberries. The small tables bore a variety of colorful plastic tablecloths. The carpeting was dark, and the specials were listed on large green chalkboards hung high. It's a cozy atmosphere, and a little dim, with the type of eclectic character that befits everything from jeans to suits and ties. Mild salsa music played continuously, at a level loud enough to enjoy, but not so loud as to interfere with conversation.

Our quiet waiter was very busy in the room, but prompt and attentive whenever we needed anything. Deep-fried tortilla strips on the table were puffed and slightly oily. The guacamole we ordered was nearly pure avocado, mashed yet still chunky enough, but Amy detected a hint of fermentation that she didn't like.

She really enjoyed her Tacos del Tio Israel ($10.25). The fish was breaded, fried, and tasty, accompanied inside the soft corn tortilla by fresh red onion, cilantro, and red cabbage with a (chipotle?) mayonnaise. The sides of rice and refried beans were the ordinary staples found in Mexican restaurants everywhere, nothing special. Her Margarita Azteca was pink like lemonade, served with small cubes and salt on the rim. She enjoyed it, and even began singing a little afterward.

Both of our entrees arrived at our table with almost suspicious speed. For the price ($16.50), I expected more from my Pollo a la Talla. The chicken was supposed to be "grilled to perfection" with a chili glaze, but to me it seemed more like it was braised (not nuked, I trust) and then sauced with a dark, bland mole. There was no chili heat, and not enough flavor or spice. The dark meat was mushy, and the breast meat was flavorless and dry. I also had the rice, and a small salad topped with awful slices of supermarket tomatoes, plus a garlic potato salad which was okay and did include garlic, but might just as well have been bought at a decent deli counter and didn't seem particularly Mexican. Even a small touch like a garnish of some sort could have made it seem less ordinary.

Overall, while it wasn't anything amazing, Taqueria Azteca is a restaurant we may return to. We both liked the food better than La Perla's, and I'm sure it's more fun when it's busier.

With two Racine locations, Main Moon serves this city's most popular Chinese food. This busy strip mall store in the Westgate Shopping Center on Highway 20 is always clean, buzzing, and reasonably prompt, considering the heavy flow of customers, which can jam the place a little at peak hours.

Most of a typical Chinese menu is available here, including Cantonese standards like Chop Suey, Egg Foo Young, and Lo Mein as well as Szechuan Shrimp and Hunan Chicken or Beef. Prices are what you'd expect, the ingredients seem good, and the entrees are tasty enough -- but the cooking, advertised as 'New York Style,'  is more like food court Chinese than a culinary experience. There's too much oil and salt and sugar, not enough creativity or spice. I have ordered Szechuan dishes as hot as possible, and still could not detect the heat of actual chilis. The fried rice is oilier, tougher, and darker than it should be, and the Orange Flavor Chicken is too syrupy.

Nevertheless, if you're nearby and just looking for a quick Chinese fix, Main Moon can fill that void. You can order at the counter, then take a seat at a table where your food will be brought to you. The dining atmosphere is all florescent light and fast food bustle, nothing relaxing or exotic, so we prefer to carry out. Main Moon 2 also delivers, and does catering.

Hours: Mon-Thu 10:30-10:00; Fri & Sat 10:30-11:00; Sun 11:30-9:30.

We stopped here for breakfast on our way 'up north' last Memorial Day weekend, and it was a good decision. The atmosphere was bland but clean and the coffee was so-so, but the service was very fast and the food really hit the spot.

My corned beef hash was made with real corned beef (not the canned stuff, which would have been good enough) and my egg was perfectly poached. It was the ideal place to grab some quick, decent food and get back on the road feeling satisfied.

Heinemann's has nine Milwaukee locations: http://www.foodspot.co...

Wonderful sushi in Kenosha? Kenosha, Wisconsin, the city of tattoos, taverns and pizza parlors? It doesn't seem possible, and yet here it is at Honada.

Since this restaurant opened a little over a year ago, we have carried out countless times and dined inside as well. The sushi and sashimi are always high quality, tender, fresh, and expertly prepared. The tempura is subtle and delicate, and the miso soup is an uplifting balance worth savoring.

Honada is 2 miles due east of I-94 on Highway 50 (Kenosha's 75th Street), so it's a convenient oasis for anyone traveling between Chicago and Milwaukee. Located in a small new shopping center, the interior is clean and solid and simple with lots of light wood and dusty rose tones. Paper shades soften the windows, and the lighting is neither too dim nor too bright. The decor incorporates Japanese touches, especially around the sushi bar, but the strip-mall atmosphere of commercial carpeting, spare walls, acoustic tile ceiling and laminated tabletops makes this a casual, somewhat office-like Japanese experience, not an exotic shoeless affair involving kimonos and tea ceremonies. You can choose either the seclusion of a quiet booth away from the main room (and even draw the curtains), or the sociability of a table closer to the action. Honada would be a good spot for a business lunch or dinner.

A third option is the entertainment of a hibachi dinner at one of several stainless steel teppanyaki grills, making Honada also a good choice for people who don't enjoy sushi, and for parties of friends, families, and children. Sudden, hissing balls of fire warm the faces of the diners surrounding the grills and draw gasps from the whole room. Comical cooks flip eggs, meats and vegetables, rapidly smooth and redistribute frying rice, juggle seasonings, display their dazzling knife skills, and joke with the kids. It's fun for everyone and the food looks good too, but I haven't tried it yet.

I come here for the sushi. Honada's menu includes several different nigiri and maki sushi and sashimi combinations priced at about $15-$20, and also about 25 "regular" rolls and 10 "special" rolls.  The regular rolls range from $3 avocado or cucumber rolls up to $8 and $9 items featuring eel, crabmeat, and yellowtail. The special rolls are spicy and crunchy $10-$13 creations with ingredients like lobster tempura, masago, and tobiko. The rolls are all very good. Also, over 2 dozen different pieces of sushi and sashimi are available a la cart, including some delicious toro (fatty tuna).

But wait, there's more! Honada serves hot appetizers (last night we had some outstanding fried squid as well as some very good BBQ squid with ginger sauce), cold appetizers, Japanese soups and salads, gently deep-fried entrees like the aforementioned tempura, tonkatsu (deep-fried pork) and chicken katsu. There are eight different teriyaki options (chicken, beef, salmon, shrimp, seafood, lobster, vegetable or tofu), rice dishes like oyako don (chicken, onion, and egg over rice), four soba noodle choices, lunch and dinner boxes, and a few desserts.

There are a few wines on the menu, but I haven't paid much attention because I generally prefer beer with my sushi. Honada offers Sapporo and Kirin, and last night we enjoyed Asahi Super Dry. I don't know about cocktails, but I'll ask next time.

The Japanese staff's service is always professional, friendly, and very prompt. As I understand it, owner Steve Shi was chef at Japanica in Greenfield (near Milwaukee's Southridge Mall) before opening this restaurant in Kenosha. (See also Dennis Getto's review for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: www.onwisconsin.com/di...)

I was wondering how a Japanese restaurant would go over in Kenosha and have been happy to witness a steady flow of customers at Honada for over a year now. I have never seen a wait, but reservations couldn't hurt. Visa, MasterCard, and Discover are accepted. Honada's hours (as of this writing) are 11-9:30 Monday though Thursday, 11-10:30 Friday and Saturday, and noon-9:30 on Sunday.

Great hamburgers in a great room since 1950.

Charlie Beinlich's (charliebeinlichs.com) is a family-run place with knotty pine paneling and mounted trout on the wall. Even though it's virtually underneath the Edens Expressway spur, once you're inside, you might as well be in the middle of Wisconsin or rural Illinois.

The beautifully brief menu (on the wall sign only -- don't wait for one to be handed to you) features simply delicious hamburgers and cheeseburgers. It also includes shrimp cocktail, barbeque beef, roast beef, grilled cheese, egg salad, and tuna salad sandwiches, cole slaw and French fries.  The bar serves beer and liquor.

Local people love this place, and it's often packed enough that there may be a short wait, but once a table opens up, the food and the service are both just right.  You're instantly at home.

Here in the upper Midwest, it's nearly impossible to find the true, smoky pork goodness of barbecue ribs as they're enjoyed in, say, Memphis or Kansas City or Texas or Arkansas. Here, people brag about rib meat falling off the bone (because they're braised beef short ribs), "barbecue" can mean bratwursts and burgers quick-broiled over flaming charcoal, and there's way too much focus on the sauce, as if some secret ingredient is more important than the meat.

Elsewhere, ribs are pork meat that you gently tug from the bone with your teeth, and "barbecue" involves more smoke than fire. But elsewhere is at least 600 miles away, so I was very excited to watch the vacant building which once housed the Stockade being slowly remodeled into Barney's Memphis Style Ribs. After the place had been open a couple of weeks, my wife and I gave it a try.

The dining room was clean and white and adorned with a few Elvis hangings, but too spare and brightly lit. The tables were tiny. The music was Nashville pop, not Memphis R&B, and the wait staff was so eager that they were asking for our drink orders before we even reached the table and took off our coats. Barney's is still very new. I imagine it may develop over time.

The prices listed on the menu seemed pretty darned steep: $19.95 for a full rack of baby back ribs and two sides (your choice of beans, cole slaw, French fries or mashed potatoes). We cautiously split an order. Also on the menu are battered cod or perch dinners, chicken (for example, eight pieces with fries at $11.95), five sandwiches and five appetizers.

Our ribs arrived in a plastic basket, with yellow food service rolls and the two sides in small plastic cups. The tableware was plastic as well.

The baby back ribs were small, not particularly meaty (I would have preferred bigger spare ribs), and simply too dry. Memphis style ribs are customarily prepared with a dry spice rub. Sauce, if desired at all, is available on the table. Barney's spice rub was actually pretty good -- not too thickly applied, zingy yet subtle -- but the whole trick to this style of ribs is to still retain the natural pork juices (often with the help of a vinegar-based "mop sauce" during smoking). That part needs work.

Also, true Memphis-style ribs are slowly smoked to doneness, not grilled. Generally, this smoke wafts a hunger-inducing aroma over the surrounding block and beyond. At Barney's, we couldn't detect the smoke inside or out, and it wasn't in the meat as much as it should be either. According to the menu, the ribs here are smoked and then finished on the grill.

The side dishes were perfunctory. The cole slaw was standard food service issue, the beans a calico-style recipe that seemed a little more homemade. Beverage choices included a few beers and Pepsi products.

Our servers were perfectly friendly and attentive young women in red Barney's T-shirts.

It's heartening to see someone refurbishing a building on a key intersection, and it's thrilling to see them attempting what amounts to a foreign cuisine in these parts. I hope this restaurant matures. Maybe they'll discover bigger, juicier ribs, dim the lights, and perhaps buy some B.B. King or Rufus Thomas CDs. I'll probably go back after a while to find out, because I love good ribs and Memphis is a 10 and a half hour drive from here. Rogers, Arkansas is over 12 hours.

The charm of Mickey-Lu's is that the room has apparently been unaltered since the restaurant was established in 1942. The Formica counter, the stools, the jukebox, the tables -- everything looks original. There's a news clipping on the wall about a couple who spent their first date at Mickey-Lu's returning to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

The hamburgers are flame broiled in a charcoal oven right behind the counter, and "served on warm Zemal hard rolls with your choice of catsup, onion, pickles, and our pat of butter."

Having never heard of a "Zemal" roll before, I asked what that meant and was told it was a type of hard roll. Running a Google search later didn't help much either. Our waitress explained that toasting the hard rolls on the grill surrounding the meat softened them, which seems counterintuitive, but the rolls were soft and warm inside, slightly toasted outside.

The paper-wrapped burger (no plate, no basket, no nothing) is served cut into halves, and the remainder of the pat of butter on mine plopped out when I lifted the first half to my mouth. Adding gobs of butter to meat is a classic Wisconsin preparation, but to me it's cheating. The beef should stand on its own.

My cheeseburger was pretty darned good, but a little too small for perfection. Mickey-Lu-Bar-B-Q was very much worth a visit. It's ridiculously inexpensive and absolutely authentic -- but if I'm going somewhere based on their burgers alone, I'm still going to Charlie Beinlich's in Northbrook, Illinois.

Finally, here's a link to the ultimate Web shrine to Mickey-Lu's:  http://www.jldr.com/mi...

Tenuta's (tenutasdeli.com) is the best thing in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I say this as someone who lived in K-Town for 43 years. It's the number one attraction that I would recommend to out-of-towners, and the only place I can remember a U.S. president visiting (George W. Bush during Campaign '04, complete with a Secret Service chopper that set down in the middle of 52nd Street).

At first sight, Tenuta's may not knock your Persols off. Surely there are comparable Italian delis in New York City, and perhaps also in Chicago. After all, it's just a food and liquor store. But what a food and liquor store!

At the center of the store is the delicatessen, where you can purchase a wide variety of Italian meats and sausages such as Genoa salami, hard salami, capicola, sopprasata, mortadella, pancetta, and of course prosciutto (choose from San Daniele, Volpi, Carando, or imported prosciutto de Parma), all sliced to order. Hot or mild Italian sausage comes in either link or bulk form. The deli also offers a number of salads and marinated vegetables, like artichoke hearts and kalamata olives, plus several sizes of muffolata sandwiches, and also cannoli and other pastries.

A huge cheese case flanks the deli, containing wedges of fine quality Asiago, Fontina, Parmigiano-Reggiano (Parmesan), Pecorino Romano, Provalone, and so on from both domestic and foreign makers. Around the corner, in the next room, is a wall of refrigerators with more cheese: Bel Paese, blue cheeses like Gorganzola and Danish Blue, brie, feta (Greek, French, or domestic), goat cheeses, sheepsmilk cheeses like Kashkaval, plus Gouda, Havarti, Muenster, mozzarella, and cheddar. (Yes, "It's the single most popular cheese in the world!")

Freezer cases along the same wall hold Tenuta's own ravioli, tortellini, gnocci, cavatelli, and other frozen pasta items. There's also frozen pasta sauce, plus gelato, spumoni, and similar cold treats.

This newer room encloses several long aisles of grocery items with everything from dried pasta, beans, Arborio rice for risotto and cornmeal for polenta to jars of octopus and anchovies, tomato sauces, pesto sauces, and pickled cauliflower. There's an impressive selection of olive oils and vinegars, including some expensive balsamico. They have chocolate covered coffee beans, hot or mild giardiniera, French mustards, dried mushrooms, dried apricots and figs, panforte from Siena, ciabatta bread, Toblerone chocolate, excellent black licorice, and on and on. You'll be astounded that such variety can fit into a store of this size.

Cooks will notice a modest assortment of equipment such as pasta machines, pizza stones, sausage griders and espresso pots. There are also novelty items such as Italian playing cards, flags, stickers, and so on. A Tenuta's T-shirt would mark any wearer as a true connoisseur of Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Tenuta's doubles as a full liquor store, offering everything from cognac to tequila, including a good selection of exotic liqueurs and cordials. Beer is available in kegs, and they stock of dozens and dozens of brands of imported and domestic beers in bottles and cans, some of it nice and cold. For the cigar aficionado, there's a large case in the front of the store containing a vast array of prime imported stogies. (You can buy budget cigars and cigarettes too).

The wine selection is more than adequate -- particularly, of course, as far as Italian wines are concerned -- and Tenuta's is known for its perpetual 'red tag sale' (two for the price of one) in the back of the store, apart from the main wine department up front.  In my experience though, the red-tag wines have not always been great values, and overall, I have found somewhat better wine prices and variety elsewhere.

One of the best things about Tenuta's is the atmosphere. For all of the trendy foods you can buy here, this is strictly an unpretentious, bustling neighborhood place. A good many of the customers are bumping into other people they know and exchanging news and gossip. The guy in line at the checkout to buy imported prosciutto and balsamic vinegar is standing behind another guy buying Pabst and Marlboros, and they both have something to say about the Bears-Packers game. To come here when the store is jammed -- jammed! --  just before Chistmas is like standing in the final scene of 'It's a Wonderful Life.' It's an essential part of the holiday for anyone who shops here.

Ralph and Chris Tenuta somehow seem to hire the hardest-working young people in Kenosha and manage to keep them busy. The staff is always moving, always courteous and helpful.

In the warmer months, the outdoor grill in front serves Italian sausages, bratwurst and other sandwiches, with seating under umbrellas at several concrete tables along the sidewalk. It's okay stuff, but there's way too much car traffic to enjoy eating. Take your food a mile and a half east on 52nd Street to picnic by Lake Michigan instead.