Last night, I ventured over to Hacienda Restaurant in Paterson with the hopes of finding a Mexican restaurant with a full bar and food good enough to satisfy a friend who was visiting from the west coast.

Their website had looked promising and since I’m easily fooled by advertising, I was eager to show off my new find. I entered Hacienda’s with the eagerness and expectations of a preschooler on Christmas morning, and what I found under the tree was a three-pack of Hanes Her Ways – in white, no less.

When we first sat down, our server brought us a basket of warm, crispy chips with a dish of thin, watery salsa to dip them in. We requested guacamole – which was oddly shiny, far too smooth, and tasted like fat-free cream cheese.

Our waiter seemed easily confused and didn’t write our orders down – but still managed to bring us the correct drinks and dinners.

Nicole’s margarita was incredibly weak and E.Clare’s and my vodka and sodas were incredibly strong.

We waited in the not-so-busy restaurant for what felt like too long for our Taco Salad, Chicken Burrito and Chicken Fajitas. And none of them were worth the wait.

E.Clare, our vegetarian, ordered the Taco Salad with no meat or cheese and extra veggies. She was expecting what the menu offered: fresh greens, black beans, avocado, and tomato. What she got was essentially romaine lettuce and black beans. When she asked the waiter for the avocado, he brought back some strange green dressing – so she dumped the remainder of our sub-par guacamole into her salad and ate it anyway. So much for extra veggies.

Nicole’s chicken burrito was bland, to say the least. She requested the sauce (you have a choice between red and green) on the side and so what she received was nothing more than chicken in a tortilla with some cheese grated on top. It came with sides of rice, guacamole, sour cream, pico de gallo and refried beans. The burrito was obviously bland and the beans were so runny it looked like they had given her a plate of iced tea.

My chicken fajitas came with all of the same sides as Nicole’s burrito and all of the same problems. The chicken, however, was fresh-tasting and juicy. It was cooked in a sweet marinade and I got an ample portion of it with my dinner. In fact, there was such a heaping pile of chicken, onions and green peppers that I could have easily split the dinner with a friend, had they given me more than four tortillas. The tortillas, however, were served in an open basket so that by the time I reached for the second one, it was already cold, hard and difficult to fold.

Hoping to find one redeeming quality to write about, I insisted that we order a dessert. The three of us split the apple chimichangas, two fried semi-sweet pastries filled with apples and cinnamon, topped with vanilla ice cream. It was delicious. Don’t get me wrong. How can fried anything, topped with vanilla bean ice cream, half a can of whipped cream and lots of cinnamon be bad? My inner-fatty loved it, but my outer-critic was irritated that I neither saw nor tasted apples. Nicole said she thought she spotted a slice in the piece of pastry she was working on, but I think sometimes she just likes to lie.

Hacienda Restaurant
102 Mc Lean Blvd
Paterson
(973) 345-1255
www.haciendarestaurant.com

— by Ali Hanford
Ali is managing editor and a co-founder of GoOutJersey and lives in Essex County. She has lived in NJ her whole life.

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