It’s Saturday night and King Street is busily pumping itself up into a crescendo as we arrive at Mad Mex with Em, Chris, Tess and the tiny terriers Will and Charlie. What was originally planned as an adults only evening at Corridor has morphed, a week later, into a family outing to Mad Mex. At the end of the evening, as we saw the cousins off safely strapped into their family-sized wagon, Strop turned to me and said “God, I’m glad I don’t have a 4 year old and a 2 year old,” rapidly followed by “I need a scotch.” Yes folks, the two Tiny Terrier Tornados gave the Mad Masked Mexican wrestlers a run for their money.
Mad Mex looks like a fun place, with huge murals of masks and lots over-size meaningless text on the walls. There are fun colourful signs, helpfully numbered so you know how to order. Pick one from column 1, add a dash of column 2, and a slurp of column 3, fold on the dotted line and insert tab B into slot C. Any place where they have to teach you the ordering system is a worry to me. The other worry was the noise. Mad Mex is from the open-fronted school of retail catering and is right next to a bus stop. I have a theory that Sydney has the noisiest buses in the world. I have no proof of this other than the damage done to my own ears, but I have been told that apprentice bus mechanics are taught the fine art of muffler perforation and fan-belt loosening in their first year at TAFE. When the frequent coming and going of buses was combined with the heavily accented front of house crew, the ordering process was reduced to pointing and shouting.
We went for a variety of burritos, naked burritos, and quesadillas. Strop and I also decided to share the Bucket-Of-Coronas-Plus-Nachos deal as a point of direct comparison with Guzman y Gomez, the other nearby Mexican fast food franchise which is coming up fairly soon. Generally, it has to be said, the food was underwhelming even if it is all wholesome, sustainable and pain-free as promised on the website. My burrito was mostly cold and the nachos were fairly free of flavour. Em commented that the only reason she finished her strawberry margarita was because it had alcohol in it. The beer was pretty good though.
While the rest of us were struggling to finish our red foil clad food, discussing new gas heaters and the turmoil of home renovations, the tiny terriers were getting restless (hard to imagine why, I know). They weren’t going to be mollified by colourful murals, nor are they the kind of kids that can be diverted by getting them to re-stack the sugar packets. No, these guys needed warm dough, sugar and an engaging wide-screen visual experience. Cue the churros with chocolate sauce and a window seat on King Street, where they were soon regaling the passing parade with their best Iron Man moves while sucking down the strangely straight, but really quite nice, churros. This ploy worked for a while and we had more conversations about reverse cladding and storm-water drainage, but Chris had to intervene when Charlie tried to pick a fight with a Buck’s Night group dressed in animal-skin onesies. Charlie was adamant that Iron Man could kick their collective weirdo arses if he put his mind to it. He was right of course, the only strange thing was that Will was the one wearing the Iron Man hoodie.
So that was Mad Mex. We’re are going to have to find someone to represent the Man Of Steel when we go to Guzman y Gomez, just to keep the contest even.
