Over the past few weeks, I’ve been watching a lot of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares on Hulu. For those who don’t know the premise of the show, it’s a show where Gordon Ramsay goes to restaurants in need and tries to fix them before they go out of business. It’s similar to Bar Rescue or any “rescue” shows.  It’s a very fun show that I recommend to anyone with access to Hulu. In honor of finishing the first three seasons of Kitchen Nightmares, I’m going to do a Kitchen Nightmare’s food review of a restaurant I went to last night.

I went to a Mexican restaurant in New Brunswick, New Jersey called La Catrina with my girlfriend. A COVID disclaimer, this is the first restaurant I’ve been to in months and I had gotten tested three days before and have been following all of the social distancing guidelines. La Catrina is a small authentic Mexican restaurant in Rutgers, New Jersey. As with most Mexican restaurants, our meal started with chips and salsa. We got 4 different types of salsa, two red and two green salsa and one spice and one mild for each. All of the salsas were very good and the chips were delicious, they were freshly made and very thick compared to normal tortilla chips. I drank a banana and chocolate smoothie (which I shouldn’t have done since I’m becoming lactose intolerant) and Cassi had an horchata. For appetizers, we got vegetarian nachos with peppers and onions and vegetarian empanadas with beans, cheese, and potatoes. The empanadas were fresh and crispy and the onions and peppers on the nachos was a tasty addition. For dinner, I had a quesadilla Azteca (quesadilla with cheese, vegan chorizo, onions, peppers, and beans) and my girlfriend had a vegetarian chimichanga with beans, potato, cheese, rice. All of our food was delicious and authentic.

This restaurant would not qualify on Kitchen Nightmares since the food was delicious and the restaurant seemed to be functioning properly but I think Gordon Ramsay would still have some notes. The restaurant was very cluttered and, at times, tacky and the menu was very long (6 pages). Even socially distanced, the restaurant felt very cramped from its organization and all of its partial walls. All aside, the food at La Catrina made for an excellent dinner that I would definitely recommend!