Review No. 195: El Portal del Gusto
120 Harkrider Street
(501) 205-9690
The Situation
She Said: I had evening focus groups in Little Rock one Monday evening—and I can’t eat too close to them and it’s too late to eat after them when they finish—so I wanted a big, comforting lunch, and I figured a local Mexican joint would be just the ticket for fast and filling.
He Said: “The Doorway to Taste” sounds like it’s got to be good, right? Of course, it needs to be in in order to compete in Conway, which now has a registered 78,564,823 Mexican restaurants, or something more than 1,000 per capita.
Ambience:
She Said: Because El Portal del Gusto is in the former location of Holly’s, I imagined it would be a counter-service type of place, but it’s a cheery sit-down restaurant with booths and tables with interesting carved chairs. There are a lot of windows with some natural light, but it’s still cozy, and we enjoyed our little mid-day date in our quiet booth.
He Said: Yes, booths or tables, whatever you like. It’s a colorful, cheery interior, which makes for a comfortable lunch space. (And oh, by the way, Holly’s didn’t close, they just moved to a different location down the street. Don’t panic!)
Drinks:
She Said: I had a diet cola with lemon wedges on the side, as one of my favorite drinks in the world is diet cola with lots of lemon juice squeezed in. It was very tasty.
He Said: Pepsi here, which means I could have my often-craved but seldom-offered Mountain Dew and drink it with impunity.
Food
She Said: I couldn’t find a menu online ahead of the visit, which is hard for me as I really like to plan my food in advance, but I assumed I’d have a taco salad and some guacamole. After getting the guacamole and warm chips, however, I realized there was no taco salad in my future as neither the full nor lunch menu listed it as an option. It’s just as well, as the taco salad in a crispy, edible bowl is a Tex-Mex dish anyway. Looking through the options, my second Mexican-restaurant go-to emerged as the top contender, the quesadilla. You can choose the meat you want in your quesadilla at El Portal del Gusto, so I chose chicken from the list. (They also have some shrimp dishes, so next time, I might ask if I can have shrimp in mine.) Okay, dear reader, this was the best quesadilla I have ever applied to my face. On the plate it’s small, but thick, and it is loaded with cheese and tons of tender, deliciously seasoned chicken. I wanted to finish it, but I couldn’t—it was so mighty. It came with refried beans and rice. The refried beans were also very fresh tasting, and not so thick and gooey. Usually I despise Mexican rice, as it’s too tomato-y, but this was also really tasty, nicely seasoned and maybe even a little fried. Everything was so good.
The best thing about the whole meal was as I was lifting the fork up to take my first bite, my mind was flooded with the memory of eating at a restaurant in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico several years ago. That was a lovely trip with my husband and a dear friend to a writers’ conference, and something in my dish at El Portal del Gusto smelled just the same as a charming local café in San Miguel, and that was a very good feeling indeed.
He Said: You didn’t mention the soup, Jones! As soon as we sat down our server brought us a complimentary small bowl of a Mexican soup with beans that was a tasty treat even before we ordered. I had the lunch Burrito (also with refried beans and rice), and since I tend to avoid red meat, I had it with chicken and cheese sauce, and from the first bite I was salivating over the subtle spices that tingled against my palette. I loved the burrito, and the Mexican rice and refried beans tasted truly authentic, as She Said said. I’d order it again tomorrow, and enjoy it just as much. And they were incredibly fast—this is a place that you can comfortably come to on your lunch hour and not have an anxiety attack over whether you’ll be back to work on time.
Service
She Said: Our service was very friendly, helpful and attentive. We felt like everyone in the place stopped by our table to ask us how our meal was and if we needed anything.
He Said: Yes, I think everyone from our server to the cook to the manager came by to ask us if everything was good at some point during the meal. I would have suspected that they recognized us from our “Eat It, Conway” blog if I didn’t know that nobody recognizes us from our “Eat It, Conway” blog. Also, they stopped at everybody else’s table as well, so I guess this is the service everybody gets.
What We Got and What We Paid: One small guacamole dip, 1 quesadilla al Gusto, 1 L-Burrito, 2 soft drinks for $33.45 (it would have been $32.32 in cash) before tip.
Elapsed Time from Our Arrival to Food Arrival: We arrived at 12:46 p.m. and our entrees arrived at 12:58 p.m.
Rating:
She Said: This is the freshest, most authentic Mexican food I’ve had in Conway… allowing for the fact that I’ve only been to Mexico twice (Tulum and San Miguel de Allende), so my qualifications are limited. But I honestly felt I’d walked back into a local café down a charming street in San Miguel when I tasted my first bite.
He Said: I have to agree that I think there is no better Mexican food in Conway. There are some very fine Mexican places here, but I think El Portal del Gusto ranks as high as any on that list.
Is El Portal del Gusto good at what it’s good for? Si! We won’t just crave Mexican food now, we’ll crave Portal del Gusto food!