I've been waiting with anticipation for the opening of the second location of La Fuente, a pretty darn popular Mexican restaurant on Milwaukee's south side. While La Fuente is by far not my favorite Mexican restaurant in Milwaukee (I think there are much better restaurants with better atmosphere and better food, including Cempazuchi, Riviera Maya and El Senorial, to name a few), I was excited to see it go in on 92nd and Blue Mound because a. it replaced Monreal's, where I had the worst Mexican meal I've ever had and was just an overall odd place, and b. it's pretty much in my backyard, meaning there is finally somewhere to walk to!
Monreal's closed sometime in the spring, and they've been working on La Fuente since June. It finally opened this last week on Oct. 12. I had already had plans to go out to dinner that night with Jeanne, a friend and former co-worker. She's always down for Mexican food, so we decided to change our plans and head to La Fuente instead.
We originally sat inside, in one of the three big dining rooms, but it was really warm in there and there was nobody else in the section of the dining room we were in, so it was a bit awkward. So we moved outside, where we had thought about sitting anyway. There are about 10 tables outside, and while you're really just sitting in the parking lot, it's still nice to be outside at any restaurant.
We started with the obligatory chips and salsa, and I was pleasantly surprised the salsa was really tasty and moderately spicy. We also got a small (which was mistake--we ended up getting another small one not too much later!) order of guacamole, which was good. We also each had a margarita--I had a original on the rocks and Jeanne had a blended strawberry. Both were good and hit the spot!
I'm almost positive our meals were just right out of the original restaurant. It will be interesting to see if they'll have a slightly different menu at the west side location. It would be nice if they did.
For our meals, Jeanne got the "chunky" beef taco plate. She said it was good.
I got one of the specials (I think that's what it was--it was on a different page of the menu and I don't see it on their online menu). It was tacos al pastor: pork tacos on corn tortillas with a "spicy" pineapple sauce, onions and cilantro. While it wasn't spicy at all, the flavor was very good. We asked the waiter for hot sauce to spice things up. At first, he looked surprised that we wanted something hotter than the salsa, and then he was all smiles about it! Unfortunately, the hot sauce didn't have much flavor--it had a kick to it, but that's about it. Combined with the salsa, however, it was good and worked for the meals.
Neither of our meals came with rice and beans, but really, we had more than enough food.
Service was good, and our waiter came out many times to see if we needed anything, refill water and, of course, get us more guac.
All in all, it was a good experience. I'll definitely still frequent other Mexican restaurants in town, but, like I said before, it's nice to finally have a place to walk to grab dinner or a cerveza ... or two ... or three ...
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