Chepe's

Chepe's: A pretty standard Mexican restaurant.  It's a chain so maybe you have another one by you, we have visited the one on Roswell road twice in the last couple of weeks.  The food is pretty average.  Not bad, but nothing to write home about.  The thing they do to try and set themselves apart from every other Mexican restaurant is that you get two different salsas with your chips.  The first is standard Mexican restaurant salsa.  However it is not spicy in the least.  In fact if you told me that it was 100% tomato puree, I wouldn't doubt it.  The second is a much darker salsa that is served warm.  This next sentence is ostensibly where I would tell you what that salsa tastes like, but it really doesn't take like anything.  You scoop some up with your chip and put it in your mouth.  It is definitely wet and it is warm, but that's about it.  Warm, wet, thick liquid.  Doesn't really sound very appetizing does it?  Well, it's not.  Both times our service was less than spectacular.  The first time the waitress was new, so it was forgivable that she was a little slow.  Also because it took more than 15 minutes to get our food, we got $5 off of our check.  So, that was nice.  This is evidently a preset deal with them, because the manager came by our table and said we were getting the $5 for 15 deal.  We didn't know what that meant until we got our check.  There listed on the check it said something along the lines of 5 for 15 with a subtraction of $5 next to it.  Which on the surface sounds like a pretty good policy, but when your computers are programmed to print that on the receipt, isn't that sort of like admitting you know your restaurant is going to fail on timeliness?  This time we did have a party of nine, which can be tough for a waitress.  The first half of the meal she was very attentive, but then about halfway through she seemed to just disappear.  At one point we managed to find her and asked for a box to take home food and it took about fifteen minutes to get it.  How hard is it to bring us a box?  In fact, she came back to the table after ten minutes or so to sort out some confusion on what drinks went on what check and then left again.  Seemed like a perfect time to give us the boxes, but alas no.  We finally got the boxes with the checks.  Despite her time consuming effort to get things right she still messed up all the drinks.  Now that I think about it, the other odd thing about the place (and this may really hit to the heart of the matter) is that I don't think I saw a single Hispanic person working in the place.  All of the wait staff looked like high school/college kids.  White high school/college kids.  Is it bad to expect Hispanic people working in a Mexican restaurant?  Anyway, it's doubtful we'll go there again.  There are plenty of other Mexican places between our house and there that are simply better.

Chepe's: C

Whistle Stop Cafe

Whistle Stop Cafe: (in Kennesaw, GA) A standard meat and two type of cafe, but the food is really great.  Their gimmick is that everything in the place is railroad themed.  They even have a large scale train that circles the restaurant on a track above the diners' heads.  (As far as I know they've never had any derailments that have landed in your food.)  The last two times I've been I've had the fried chicken and the fried clams.  Both were excellent.  Yeah, I know what you're thinking, perhaps I should lay off of the fried foods.  Well, just to calm your mind, both times I also had fried green tomatoes as a side dish.  They were excellent too.  Our service wasn't great the last time, but in the restaurant's defense, the place was packed and the waitresses were running around like maniacs trying to keep up.  (Okay, perhaps there's a bit of exaggeration there.  They actually weren't 'running' at all.  But then saying "they were walking quickly like maniacs" just doesn't carry the same weight.)  At any rate, this time (on a Monday) the place was nearly empty and the service was fantastic.  The prices are good too, so you really can't miss.  (Unless of course you don't like anything that they serve, in which case you are just a picky high maintenance dooberhead and you probably shouldn't be eating out anyway.)  As for me, I'll definitely be back and I'll probably eat something fried.

Whistle Stop Cafe: A