Restaurant Review: La Parrilla Mexican Grill

When I first moved to Arkansas in January 2011, I never imagined it would become the home to some of my favorite restaurants. But the food scene in Little Rock is surprisingly excellent. Even more surprisingly, one of my favorite Little Rock restaurants was a Mexican chain called El Porton. Graham and I ate here at least once a month. The food was excellent. Especially the California burrito. And during happy hour, a small pitcher of margaritas is dirt cheap.

Anyways. Back to La Parrilla. It's challenging finding restaurants we love in a new area. Places that have great reviews on urbanspoon have poor reviews on Yelp. And vice versa. It's even more challenging considering we don't have any friends here yet that can recommend places. My search for excellent Mexican food led me to La Parrilla, which had mostly positive reviews on both.

It's in what looks like a fairly new shopping center in Suffolk. The restaurant was nice, we were seated quickly (they were slow even though it was a peak time on a Saturday night). The server was a little inattentive, but not horrible.

The complimentary salsa was delicious. It tasted fresh, was spicy and had lots of cilantro.

We both ordered meals that were pretty much identical to our favorite options back at El Porton. My favorite was a California burrito... A beautiful 10" tortilla stuffed with chicken, pico de gallo, guacamole, black beans & rice, smothered in cheese sauce. La Parilla had two that were similar. I chose the "crazy burrito". It was close, but not quite the same. For one, it had steak instead of chicken, re-fried beans instead of black beans and no rice. I don't like re-fried beans so next time I'll order it with black beans. It was absolutely delicious. Ad enormous. And I only managed to eat about half of it.

Yes, that's my wallet for a size comparison. My full sized checkbook wallet. 

Graham ordered the Chorio Pollo, which is exactly what he ordered at El Porton. He said it was every bit as good as what he was used to getting. The chicken was tender, and the crumbled chorizo was delicious. It's a huge platter of food, which he finished... and was miserable for about four hours.

We'll definitely go back to La Parrilla. There are a few more things on the menu I can't wait to try. Like their fajitas. The table next to us ordered those, and they looked amazing.

We've been in Virginia about four months, and I'm happy that we're finally getting out and exploring the culinary options the area has to offer.