Serena Maria Daniels of Metro Times doesn't mince words in her thumbs-down review of Calexico, the Cali-Mexican restaurant that opened Friday in the One Campus Martius building in downtown Detroit.
The franchise restaurant out of New York is owned by local businessman Randy Dickow, who operates three other restaurants in downtown Detroit.
Daniels writes:
At Calexico, the beef was chewy cubes of hanger steak, the "Chipotle"-style pork drenched in vinegary sauce, the flavor of the pollo asado (grilled chicken) buried under lime juice and black pepper. The tortillas were rubbery. The much publicized "quesadilla rolls" here were reminiscent of those Taco Bell “Grill Stufted” burritos – essentially a burrito flattened out in a panini press. And the prices — $4.50 on average for a taco, or as much as $11 for a carne asada quesadilla — were offensive.
Perhaps more disappointing than the let down of my Calexico visit is the notion that the restaurant owners, their local partner Randy Dickow, or their Bedrock landlords would presume that Detroiters are too ignorant to know the difference between hyped-up fast food and authentic street food. That might have worked in New York, but in Detroit, with its sizable Latino population, their intentions — to pass off overpriced, Americanized Mexican cuisine as the real deal — come off as contrived to the point of insulting.
