It’s my birthday today. Last night, we went out for dinner at Pancho’s Mexican Villa, which is at 885 Albany Hwy in East Victoria Park. We ate there around five years ago and really enjoyed it – I wanted to return and see if it was just as good as before (plus, I’ve been craving nachos for the past few weeks!).

I printed two coupons from the restaurant’s website for a free margarita or Corona (one for Jac and one for me!). I liked my margarita but to be honest, I didn’t actually finish it (I’m very much a non-drinker of alcohol, even when it is free!).

To start, we shared an entree sized serve of chicken nachos (AU$11). They were more tomatoey than cheesey, which suited me just fine. The tomatoes were soooooooo sweet. They were very good chicken nachos, with a generous amount of chicken chunks throughout. Bloody good. We ordered it, and all our dishes, medium hot (you can request mild, medium or hot). The food came out really fast, which was great. I was starving, as I’d purposely not eaten since 12:30pm (our dinner booking was for 7pm).

And here’s an even closer view of the nachos.

For her main course, Jac ordered the Fajitas de Carne (AU$25 single, or $40 for two). The description from the menu: “Traditional dish of La Huesteca, Tenderised, spiced and grilled, accompanied by villa sauces, vegetables, lettuce, cheese, tomatoes, sour cream and flour Tortilla”.

The beef and vegetables came out piping hot on a sizzling plate (the sort you’d get sizzling beef on in a chinese restaurant). the meat was extremely tender, and had that beautiful chargrilled flavour.

Here’s Jac’s partially assembled first fajita – see the steam coming off the filling?

My main course was the Baja! which consisted of two chicken enchiladas, rice and frijoles. As you can see it was a tomatoey cheesey Jabba the Hutt style spreading mess. But it was really good. The enchiladas were stuffed full, REALLY FULL of chicken (yes, I was in a chicken kind of place last night). I liked the rice, which had corn kernels through it. I didn’t care so much for the frijoles, probably because I prefer the beany texture of individual beans, not the mushy, pastey texture of the frijoles.

See how chickeny they were?