LaLupe Mexican Restaurant

After a long time of wanting to go to one of the many Mexican restaurants in what used to be predominantly the Italian Market section, I finally did. I brought my daughter with me to a little place that was quaint looking from the outside, called La Lupe, on 9th, right near the famous "Geno's" steaks. I was really looking forward to trying the food at the place that announces it's the "Very Best Mexican Food in Philly" right on it's colorful awning.

The place has a definite ethnic feel to it, and it seemed appropriate for a Mexican restaurant. The open air seating gives it a welcoming and airy feeling as the front of the restaurant opens onto the sidewalk, where there's also tables for dining al fresco. On this night, it was pretty quiet and there seemed to be more take-out orders than seated customers.

Both Em and I headed over the glass refrigerator where there is a large selection of beverages to choose from. The array of colorful fruit drinks and Mexican soda's is very appealing and there's also regular drinks like Coke, Snapple and Fuze. We both settled on Boing Guava juice which was quite good, however Emma, did point out that is still not as good as the Guava juice you get in Hawaii.

So I decided to order some Guacamole with our chips as I had just made a fresh batch of guacamole at home, and I wanted to compare. Well unfortunately we were both disappointed and while it was okay, it was no where near as good as the batch I made. Firstly, there was way too much cilantro in it and it simply overpowered the avocado. The mixture was runny and not very thick leading me to believe that their avocados were not fresh, and maybe even pre-packaged. We had just bought fresh avocados at the produce store in the Reading Market so we comparing it to that level of freshness.

Em, just ordered two tacos ala carte, one Bistec (steak) and Pollo (chicken), and they came wrapped in soft flour, tortillas stuffed with more cilantro, diced onions and guacamole. On the plate there were two slices of cucumber and radish. Em said she never saw an option for soft or hard shell tacos, but when we were leaving, we noticed another customer had, what appeared to be hard shell tacos which actually looked better.

I ordered the "Mixed" Fajitas combination platter, which included bistec, pollo and camarones. The platter also comes with arroz and frijoles, I was looking forward to this as it had been a while since I had a simple Mexican style dinner with rice and beans. There is no shortage of Mexican restaurants in the city and they seem to be popping up more and more. But I was gunning for a more rustic or common, street style Mexican food, not the nouvelle cuisine influenced style that Mexican restaurants now serve. While La Lupe delivered on this notion, the quality of the food was less than perfect. My Fajitas came out on a hot cast iron sizzle plate, but the contents came out steaming rather than sizziling. It's as if they had sauteed all the ingredients, including onions, corn, green beans, peas, carrots and mushrooms and then poured it onto the sizzle platter.

Though bountiful, the meat and veggies were not grilled, and the shrimp were pretty darned tiny. While the flavor of the combination was alright, there nothing notable about it. It was almost like a stir-fry and everything sorta mixed together with no separation of meats. I suppose fajitas, are really not an authentic Mexican dish and is more of a Tex-Mex concoction, so I am not sure what I was expecting. Perhaps I should have ordered a more typical selection, enchiladas or burritos and tacos.

Well it's unclear if I will make my way back to La Lupe again, as my first impression sadly, left me uninspired and even disappointed. There are other Mexican restaurants in this area of town, but I am not sure their offerings will be much better.

La Lupe Mexican Restaurant
1201 S 9th St, Philadelphia PA 19147
(215) 551-9920
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