Las Panchero's

• no bathroom
• credit cards accepted
• english spoken
• $$
• indoor dining
• drive thru

Right where the Silver Strand meets Palm Ave., Las Panchero's garish sign hangs it right out on the road for transient passers-by and military men who work the near-by base. It entices those "slumming it" in IB from Coronado to step in for something quick and naughty; something they'd be mortified if the other folks at the country club caught wind of. While she appears cheap and undiscriminating, Las Panchero's is not without her own unique touch of class.

I am sure the former franchisee of this obviously converted fast food building would shudder at its current state, but this is probably the cleanest taqueria I've been to in IB so far. The numerous tables seem to have been wiped in the past 24 hours and i didn't even notice any piled up plates or wrappers.

The lady at the counter spoke perfect English, which I could easily hear over the tejano, which was repressed to a moderate volume. She was extremely cordial and the food was out in no time.

You are offered a small paper boat of free chips and given free reign of the condement bar, which includes a salsa, 2 picos, and those pickled carrot and pepper things, which made their way into this southern boy's first California Burrito.

The burrito was pretty sizeable, but not gargantuan. I would estimate it to be in the 1/2-3/4 lbs range. I might have to invest in a scale for this project. I was expecting to find frech fries in there, and there might have been it was kinda hard to tell with white sauce flooding everything. Reguardless, it was very tasty and well-portioned and the steak wasn't too chewy.

The other menu offerings were pretty standard, though I did notice machaca. There was a breakfast menu, but they kill it at 11. Obviously, this place does well and it isn't hard to see why. This was a fast, no-hassle experience.