Cilantro Mexican Grill

I always love it when restaurants want to be bigger than what they really are by adding fancy words like "Grill" to their name. Cilantro is no Grill, it is not a Mexican Restaurant either. What it is, is some of the best Burritos and Tacos you can get in Rhode Island, plain and simple.

FINAL VERDICT

AUTHENTICITY: 3 out of 5

AMBIANCE: 3 out of 5

FOOD: 4 out of 5

PRICE: Affordable; $5 to $10.

I've been going to Cilantro for a few years now, so this was no new adventure. This time the crew consisted of 2.5 Gringos, 0.5 Spanish, and 1.0 Mexicans. This is a fast food place; it is quick. It's what I call WYSIWYE eating (What You See Is What You Eat). You see them make the burrito in front of you. Lots of choices of meats from shredded pork, to steak, to chicken and veggie options. Tons of condiments, including, like the 0.5 Gringa = 0.5 Spaniard said, really really good fresh guacamole. As I mentioned before, most of us have been here a bunch of times over the years, and the quality is always great, the service is great, the food tastes great. Now, to the food:

Christina: Overfilled Pork Burrito - 4 out of 5

Denise: Ground Beef Burrito - 4.5 out of 5

Jim: Ground Beef Hard Shell Tacos - 5 out of 5

Pete: Grilled Chicken Quesadilla - 4 out of 5

Juan: Grilled Chicken Burrito - 4.5 out of 5

The entrance

Getting ready to order...

Massive romaine on Jim's Tacos. Jim likes romaine.

The experts

A wide view of Cilantro.

Pete's jumbo quesadilla.

Denise's mammoth beef burrito.

Christina's gargantuan pork burrito with guac.

My baby as it was first delivered. I had to slap it a couple times before eating.

The end of the burrito, spilling guac left and right.

Well, as you can see by the photos, it was a barbaric feast, with extra napkins and lots of drippy guacamole. Food was great, as usual. Pete mentioned it is one of the few places where it doesn't matter if you order the small of large, because everything is large. Christina and Denise, who are lightweights, only ate half their burrito. I should've followed their lead, that thing was huge!

The one negative thing we all agreed on was the ambiance. In their effort to franchise the Cilantros in RI, they must've hired a "Designer" that did a really great job of coming up with cool distressed graphics and a color palette of brick red and mustard yellow, and with all this uniformity it lost the innocence of a local burrito place and travelled to the assembly line look of the big chains. The booths are nice, the place is sparkling clean, but Jim thought the lightbulbs should be halogens instead of CFLs because they wouldn't have such a harsh light. Leave it to the Rocket Scientist.

So, while we mourned the loss of personality from the previous decor, we celebrated that the food is still "para chuparse los dedos."

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Cilantro Mexican Grill
www.cilantromex.com
121 Weybosset St.
Providence, RI
Tel: 401-421-8226