Restaurant #21 – Cosina Grill

Restaurant #21 – Cosina Grill
Friday, July 26, 2013
Heather, Wigs, Kevin & Julie

Finally – we’ve passed the halfway point in our restaurant quest!! Wigs and I were trying to figure out a place to go while we were waiting for our respective spouses. We chose Cosina Grill, a BYO Mexican place at 1706 W. Foster. Their description: Mexican gastronomy with a touch of contemporary flavors. All dishes come from recipes passed down through generations in the families of the owners.

The décor was warm – kind of darkly lit with lots of oranges and reds, and decorated with cool pictures. We started with guacamole and queso fundido with chorizo. The guac was really fresh and flavorful. Queso was as you’d expect – kind of greasy. I just tried a small bit of that, but everyone else filled the corn tortillas with the gooey mess and said it was good.

For entrees:
Heather – Enchilada Trio – one steak with mole sauce, one chicken with green mole, and one plantain and Caribe cheese with guajillo mole covered w/fresh cheese. The presentation was cute on these – red, green and yellow.
Wigs – Carne Asada with (I think..) black mole sauce
Kevin – Adobe chicken enchiladas
Julie – Tilapia Hidalguense - Wrapped in cornhusks and filled with fresh herbs, nopalitos, onions, fresh garlic and medium spice arbol sauce. This was awesome – enough kick to it to feel the burn, but not enough to want me to ask for a glass of milk. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been hot enough for wigs 

All dishes came with black beans and rice, except mine which came with rice and potatoes. Because if you’re ordering fish, apparently you need more starch. It was all really good, and with BYO, totally affordable. This one for sure is worth a repeat. I like their web address:
http://co-si-na.com/

After dinner, we walked down to Big Jim’s (or was it Big Joe’s???). They had turtle races going that night. Which I thought were hilarious when I was 20-something. Now I just felt sorry for the turtles – they were in this cardboard box and taken out for the races and then back in the box when it was over. Poor things. The guy putting them on the table and back in the box actually put plastic gloves on to handle them. I don’t want to think about why. Ick. And the announcer was pretty annoying – you were either a Turtle Virgin or a Turtle Whore. OK, funny the first time he said it, but after the 50th time, it got old. The bar was pretty crowded though and each time you bought a drink, you got a ticket that went into the pool that they drew from to participate in the turtle races. Heather won! She gave the ticket to a guy we were chatting with at the bar and let him do the race. He was a Turtle Whore. Their turtle lost. (If you won, you got a t-shirt – not sure if it was just the bar name on the shirt or something about the races.)

Anyways – we watched the end of the Cub game (Cubs win!), and then headed home. Fun night. Great dinner.