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Review: La Abuela Mexican Restaurant

exterior of a restaurant with a green neon sign in the window that reads "La Abuela"

A few months ago, Julie and I were walking through West Reading during the annual Fall Fest on the Avenue. As we made our way down Penn Avenue, we paused outside La Abuela Mexican Restaurant, the newest restaurant in town at the time.

The owners were standing outside, handing out photocopied versions of the menu to everyone walking past. I was intrigued, but I always like to give a restaurant some time before making a visit.

Fast-forward to a Friday night in November, in need of a place for dinner that was close to home. I dug through our pile of menus and came across the La Abuela menu I picked up two months ago. My decision was made.

La Abuela is located in the old Van’s Cafe, next to Subway on the 400 block of Penn Avenue. It has a major advantage over many of the other restaurant’s along West Reading’s main thoroughfare: a row of customer parking spaces on a private lot behind the building.

wall mural of a map of Mexico with states in bright colors of organe, pink, green, yellow and purple

The most notable change in the building since the new restaurant took over the space is the floor-to-ceiling map of Mexico. Bright shades of orange, yellow, purple and green highlight the country and neighboring Guatemala, home to one of the restaurant’s co-owners.

In English, La Abuela translates to “Grandmother.” A picture of an elderly grandmother adorns the menu, which is filled with traditional Mexican dishes.

empty bottle of Jarritos mango next to a full red glass

It also includes 10 flavors of Jarritos, a brand of Mexican soda. I enjoy these sodas so much more than American soda because they are made with real cane sugar (and a lot of it. A two-serving bottle contains more than 50 grams).

But what I love more than the soda is the food. I couldn’t wait for our meal so I ordered an appetizer of flautas, fried tacos filled with chicken and topped with homemade salsa, queso fresco, Pico de Gallo and sour cream.

flautas topped with drizzles of sour cream with a side of green salsa

The crispy tortillas ate like an egg roll with more flavor coming out of every crunchy bite. The sour cream and queso fresco helped temper the spices in the salsa. I probably could have gone through a couple plates of flautas and left very happy.

Instead I finished off my share and waited for my tacos al pastor to arrive. Normally, I go for something heavier like enchiladas or fajitas, but marinated pork with pineapple, sautéed onions and cilantro sounded too good to miss.

three tacos al pastor with pork, pineapple and onions on a plate with a cup of refried beans, cup of guacamole, cup of chunky salsa and a cup of sauce

I was not disappointed. The meat was so tender and flavorful. With the sautéed onions, it ate more like fajitas than tacos.

Three different salsas accompanied the dish, including a cup of fresh-made guacamole. It was so smooth with the right mix of cilantro and mild heat. The other two salsas — one a Pico de Gallo, the other a tomatillo sauce — were good in their own right (the Pico was probably my favorite of the two), but the guacamole was perfect.

While I was enjoying my tacos, Julie was digging into her enchiladas verdes. Like me, she opted for something a little out of her comfort zone as she normally enjoys her enchiladas with a red sauce, but she greatly enjoyed this change of pace.

white plate with three enchiladas topped with verde sauce and cheese with a scoop of yellow rice, serving of refried beans and a small amount of greens with a tomato

The chicken was juicy and spicy, but not hot. The cheese was melted inside the tortillas as well as sprinkled on top.

Her favorite part of the meal might have been the refried beans, which she called the best she has ever eaten. I would tend to agree.

The beans were made using black beans so they looked more appealing than the brown beans we get at most restaurants. The black beans also gave it a richer flavor.

After we had our fill, Julie asked our waiter for a box for her last enchilada. Our waiter, one of the co-owners, tried to talk us into dessert, saying it was better than dinner. Unfortunately we had no room left in our stomachs to confirm his claims.

We had arrived early for dinner, about 5 p.m., and there were not many others in the restaurant with us. By the time we were finished an hour later, it had begun filling up for dinner so it took our waiter a little longer to take our check (about $35) and see us on our way.

After a delicious, and quite filling meal, I was glad that I found the menu earlier that day. La Abuela was definitely the right choice.

BCE Rating
Food: Very Good
Service: Good
Ambiance: Good
Price: Reasonable

La Abuela
448 Penn Ave
West Reading, PA 19611

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Review: Tlacuani Mexican Restaurant and Grill

Metal sign hanging from a building with the words "Tlacuani Mexican Restaurant & Bar" carved in it

Since I started Berks County Eats as a part-time hobby in 2012, I have only had two dinners that didn’t live up to my expectations.

One of those was La Cocina Mexicana in Kutztown. It was one of my earliest reviews, and one of the most disappointing, with food that our party of four all found to be bland and tasteless, the complete opposite of what Mexican food should be.

La Cocina notwithstanding, there are still plenty of places in Berks County to get great Mexican food. One of those is Tlacuani Mexican Restaurant in Temple.

Tlacuani literally means “someone who eats things” or “glutton” in the Aztec language of Nahautl (thank you Google Books search). That suits me just fine because if the food’s good, I have no problem being a glutton when I go out to eat.

Dining room filled with brightly colored tables and chairs - one set is green, one set is red, one set is orange

The dining room is vibrant. Some would call it gaudy. The tables, each one carved with a scene of life in Mexico, are painted in bright colors with matching chairs. Shades of orange, blue, red, green and pink pop against the off-white tile floor.

Carving on the back of a chair depciting a man in a sombrero riding a bull in front of a small village

Our six-person table, which felt empty with just the two of us, had a scene set outside an old adobe building. The sides and all of the chairs were painted green, with alternating scenes of rural towns and a man riding a ox.

It’s a stark contrast from the homey feel of the building overall. Our table was directly in front of the original fireplace. Above it, behind a sculpture on the mantle, is a metal plate that reads, “Temple Hotel. 1853.”

Basket of tortilla chips lined with white paper with chili pepper images and a blue cup filled with salsa

Like many (all?) Mexican restaurants, the meal began with free chips and salsa, but Tlacuani’s was unlike any we had tried before. The salsa was not the standard red tomato mixture. Instead, there were two options: a slaw-like mixture with green chilies mixed in, and a green syrup-like sauce.

Both packed a serious punch and had us refilling our drinks before we had got through half of our chips. Any worries we had about our meal being bland were quickly thrown out the window.

Tlacuani offers a more varied menu than some other Mexican restaurants we have tried before. Sure, there are plenty of options for enchiladas, burritos and tacos, but there seemed to be more entree options, or at least more than appealed to me, including the chiles en nogada.

Blue plate with rice, beans and stuffed poblano peppers

Two stuffed poblano peppers arrived, each one stuffed with a mixture of steak, pork, almonds and fruit, topped with white sauce and dried cranberries, and served with four tortillas.

The peppers easily peeled apart into strips that laid nicely on my shells. I piled on the filling (and rice and beans for good measure) and dug in. It was love at first bite. Poblanos are on the mild end of the heat spectrum, but that was enough spice to cut through the sweetness of the filling. The sauce was delicious, and though simple, the dried cranberries were a pleasant surprise every time I found one on my fork.

Sopes were another dish that I had not seen before. Perhaps I’ve skimmed over it in other places, but Julie spotted it on the menu at Tlacuani and decided to order it.

Plate with two sopes topped with tomatoes, lettuce and cheese

The description was rather vague, only saying that there would be two soft corn sopes topped with choice of meat, with beans, lettuce, tomatoes and cheese, but no mention of what a sope is. I blame my ignorance on the Pennsylvania Dutch in me.

It turns out that sopes are little corn pockets that look like hollowed-out waffles but are crispy like a taco salad shell. The meat (in this case, chorizo), was buried inside with the veggies loaded on top. It was close to a taco, but the sopes were heavier with more corn flavor. And the chorizo added all of the spice needed to make it a perfect dish.

We had really hoped to finish our meal with some fried ice cream, but neither of us had any room for dessert so we asked for our check—just under $30 for the two of us.

Three years ago, I walked out of La Cocina disappointed.

This trip to Tlacuani definitely did not disappoint.

BCE Rating
Food: Very Good
Service: Good
Ambiance: Good
Price: Reasonable

Tlacuani Mexican Restuarant
5005 Kutztown Rd
Temple, PA 19560

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Review: Alebrije – Perkiomen Avenue

hot sauces and salt and pepper shakes sit next to a wire cactus holding the specials menu

According to Wikipedia.com, an alebrije is a piece of Mexican folk art, a brightly-colored sculpture of a fantastical creature.

It’s also a really cool name for a restaurant.

Though the name is catchy, it’s the food and the atmosphere that hooks people on a restaurant. The owners of Alebrije must be doing something right to have three locations in Reading: 5th Street Highway, Perkiomen Avenue and State Hill Road.

Alebrije’s Perkiomen Avenue location is set in a repurposed Bojangles. The old drive-through window still juts out awkwardly from the side of the building. Inside, guests are greeted by a parade of cardboard cutouts, including The Most Interesting Man in the World who invites you to “stay thirsty, my friend.”

A large mural is painted across the back wall of the dining room. The clichéd southwestern scene features a desert complete with cacti. A door to nowhere betrays the fact that a wall has been removed.

The old order counter is now the bar where the wait staff were tending to a man who had his coat draped over one stool and his briefcase on another. All told he took up three of the four bar stools, and the fourth was blocked by the collection of empty margarita glasses.

We got a seat at one of the high top tables that were shoe-horned into the bar area. A forged-iron cowboy stick figure held up a dessert card and guarded the three bottles of hot sauce (two red, one green).

blue basket with tortilla chips with a cup of salsa

Like all good Mexican restaurants, the meal starts with unlimited chips and salsa, and for my wife, a frozen banana margarita.

woman drinking a frozen margarita from a tall sugar-rimmed glass

There was definitely no skimping when it came to her drink. It was big, and as her eventual hangover proved, not watered down.

When it comes to main courses, my wife and I each have our Mexican favorites. For her, it’s ranchero sauce, a traditional mild red sauce.

For me, nothing beats a good mole sauce. Though there are thousands of variations on this chili pepper-based sauce, my favorites are the ones that have that dark brown color that comes with the addition of chocolate.

plate of enchiladas topped with mole sauce on a plate with rice and refried beans

When my enchiladas poblanas came out, they looked like they were covered in the darkest chocolate. The sauce was amazing, the mix of heat and sweet balanced perfectly with the chicken. Admittedly I have not made it to every Mexican restaurant in Berks County, but of the ones I have, this is the best sauce of any kind that I have found.

While my enchiladas were excellent, I was very disappointed to see the light brown puddle next to them on my plate. I like refried beans—they’re great as a side or rolled up as part of a burrito—but they should at least look like beans. Though the beans tasted fine, they were runny and just did not look appealing.

Overall though, Alebrije was impressive. The building may have been a little cramped, but it’s pretty impressive what they’ve done to turn it from fast food into a real restaurant. The prices are impressive, too. Even with the margarita, our bill was less than $30. That’s hard to do without a drink at most restaurants.

I am sad to report though, I saw no mythical creatures during my visit.

BCE Rating
Food: Very Good
Service: Very Good
Ambiance: Good
Price: Very Reasonable

Alebrije Mexican Restaurant
3805 Perkiomen Ave
Reading, PA 19606

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Review: La Cocina Mexicana

I have high expectations every time I visit a restaurant for the first time. I want a reason to come back, something that sets it apart from the hundreds of other restaurants in Berks County. I’m looking for a unique experience. I’m looking for attentive service. Above all, I’m looking for great food.

Unfortunately, it’s inevitable that I will be disappointed from time to time.

La Cocina Mexicana has been a staple in downtown Kutztown as long as I can remember. Throughout my college career, a wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man beckoned patrons into the nondescript two-story brick building on the corner of Main St. and Constitution Blvd.

But inside the building comes alive. Vibrant shades of red, yellow, orange and green pop from the carved wooden tables. A self-portrait of Frida Kahlo hangs on the wall, her ominous unibrow staring at the diners below.

wooden table with carved fruit design


I ordered the mole poblano, described as “pieces of chicken smothered in rich, red or green mole.” Mole poblano is normally a delicious dark sauce made of chili peppers, a dozen different spices, and sometimes chocolate. The flavors should dance across your tongue, a perfect blend of spicy and salty.

plate with mole poblano, rice, refried beans and a small salad


My meal hit none of those flavors. The chicken was boiled, dry and tasteless. “Pieces” is a great way to describe it because it was hard to tell what type of meat I was eating. Some of it was dark, some white, all of it flavorless. The sauce was as flavorless as the meat. There was no hint of chili peppers, or any other flavor to speak of.

Every order comes with rice, refried beans and a side of guacamole. The rice was yellow and dry while the “beans” were a brown, watery mess that was all filler and hardly any beans. The guacamole at least looked appealing, even if it didn’t taste it.

Mexican food, when done right, is flavorful and exotic. It uses spices that other ethnic foods don’t, and opens diners to a world of flavors that otherwise go undiscovered. My meal at La Cocina wasn’t even close. There were four of us in total, and everyone left disappointed with their meals.

The only redeeming part of our meal was dessert, fried ice cream, whipped cream and chocolate sauce piled high atop a fried tortilla shell. The shell was like one you would get for a taco salad, deep fried, yet still light and airy. The ice cream was covered in a delicious, crumbly fried shell. It’s the only reason I would have to go back again.

bowl of fried ice cream with two spoons


The service wasn’t much better than the food. The food came very shortly after we ordered, which should have been the first clue that it wasn’t going to be a hand-crafted meal, but we had to wait a long time to order. When the meal was finished, we split the check, part cash and part credit, but our waitress missed a $10 bill and charged my card for the additional amount.

Berks County has plenty of other options for Mexican dining, so save the trip to Kutztown and try someplace else.

BCE Rating
Food: Poor
Service: Poor
Ambiance: Very Good
Price: Reasonable

La Cocina Mexicana
107 W. Main St
Kutztown, PA 19530

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