Dine – Jalapeños – Gloucester, MA

Moving from California to Massachusetts is hard, mainly because of the lack of good Mexican food. It took the boyfriend and I many less than amazing Mexican meals to not only discover this but then also to eventually find a couple good Mexican restaurants near us. A perk of living in a town supported heavily by tourism in the summer months, is that it forces the majority of restaurants to have good food and decent service, which it unfortunately not always the norm these days.

The restaurant can easily be found driving down main street Gloucester, as it takes up nearly half a block of store front. Once inside you realize how large it actually is, with an entire bar area and two different dining rooms. On occasion they will have a live band playing lively mariachi music in the bar, which easily travels throughout the restaurant.

Usually when we visit, we start off with margaritas, because why not? The husband likes their house marg on the rocks, while I mix it up with either a strawberry or mango marg. They do have entire list of specialty margaritas and drinks (in addition to a full bar), but we never get too fancy. My sister in law did try one that had banana liquor, and said it was good, although you’d have to really like banana liquor (I wasn’t sure anyone on earth did?).  They always bring delicious chips and salsa, which is more like pico de gallo, while you are deciding what to order.

Because we have been here so many times, we have tried a good majority of their menu, in addition to their ever changing specials. Some of our favorites include the tortilla soup, the fish tacos, and the enchiladas (chicken or cheese). To be honest the majority of the time we get enchiladas because we are creatures of habit and both happen to be obsessed with enchiladas. Whenever we go out we never order dessert, half because we’re stuffed and half because my husband hates sweets, so I have no idea what they are like. So, if your looking for some decently good Mexican on the North Shore make your way to Jalapeños!

Travel – Flack Back Friday to Day Two in Chicago

Our second day in Chicago we went the ultimate tourist route and decided to hit Wriggly Field, the Lincoln Park Zoo, and Willis Tower (aka Sears Tower).
We adventured to Wriggly field knowing full well it wasn’t open, considering it was NOT spring and roughly 25 degrees outside. But even seeing the stadium from the outside was pretty cool. They have all kinds of banners and signs and statues around. And it was kind of nice that we were the only ones around

Next was onto the Lincoln Park Zoo, which we actually kind of stumbled upon. I had convinced the boyfriend to go for a walk even though it was freezing. We happened upon the zoo and it was FREE! Not expecting much for a free zoo, we were throughly impressed! All kinds of animals from Moneys, to zebras, to camels to lions were all there and doing the animal things that they do!

In the afternoon we met up with our Chicagoan  friends (who happen to be Californians) to go to the Sears *Willis* Tower. They had been living in the area for over a year and still hadn’t been so they joined in the  tourist adventure to check it off their Chicago Bucket List.

After standing in line for quite some time we finally made it to the front entrance where you take an elevator to the top. Before we went we heard rumors that you could feel the building move with the wind because of how tall it is. This is TRUE, now its not like an earthquake movement, but it is defiantly not a stable ground. The view is amazing, even on a cloudy day, and the ‘glass’ boxes sticking out from the building are pretty freaking cool! (or scary if you don’t like heights).

To complete our adventurous day, we decided to find some Mexican food for dinner, seeing as our Chicagoan friends has told us multiple times how much they miss good Mexican food from California. I put my best yelp-ing foot forward and found us Blue Agave Tequila Bar & Restaurant, which was near our hotel and had decent to good reviews.
We all figured we might as well take a chance since we all love Mexican food and how bad can you really mess up chicken, rice, beans and tortillas? At the restaurant we found amazing (and Cheap) Margaritas and delicious Mexican food of all kinds. We all ordered something different and ended up with at least one bite from each plate. This has now become our friends go to spot for Mexican food in Chicago… guess its alway worth it to take a chance!