Gemma "It's not just food...it's a lifestyle!"

Tries to be a 50’s burger joint. Feels rather dingy and dank. Decent burgers, like the others in this chain. Surprisingly good chili. Fine chocolate malteds. But always smells a little moldy…pleasant wait staff.

When I was pregnant, I was on a special diet. The only restaurant meal I could find at lunchtime that met the diet’s requirements was the Fiesta Salad at Texas Cattle Company—Lancaster and Palmdale locations. I ate so many of the salads that the Lancaster wait staff began to recognize me and dubbed my unborn son “Fiesta Baby”.

What does this tell you?
1) I never got sick of the salad—it is THAT good. I still routinely eat it.
2) The wait staff is UNBELIEVABLY friendly and has good bonds with regular customers, as well as with 1-timers.
2) You should eat here. With your kids. They serve a bowl of popcorn the minute you enter and they give ice cream to kids for free for dessert.

This is what you hope that every local chain will be like.

The Greenhouse chain—as represented by the restaurants in Palmdale, Santa Clarita, and Lancaster—used to be among my favorites. Then they changed. The salads got smaller. MUCH smaller. The dressings became more watery. The sandwiches got rather shorter in length, and well…you know how it goes. They tightened their belts by letting ours remain more loose than before.

My perennial Greenhouse favorite—the Chinese Chicken Salad—shrank to a pile of lettuce with a bit of chicken and a mandarin orange segment or 2. You have to beg for a reasonable amount of dressing.

It’s now reduced from a great lunch to an okay lunch. But I generally trot around the corner to the Whole Wheatery or to Texas Cattle Company when I want a salad.

It’s dark. This is the only disadvantage I can think of with this restaurant. At lunchtime, I and the Girls had trouble reading the menu.

But the best part of this place is the lunch specials. This branch of this area-wide chain does the best lunches for an excellent price. Good soup, good mini combo plates, good price.

Beyond the darkness and the lunch plates, the menu is a pretty standard one for a Mexican restaurant. Everything you want is on there, and there is a fine selection of dinners available. Food is good and filling; children’s menu is pretty standard, and my son likes its various choices.

No dish stands out as exceptional, but the atmoshpere is relaxed, the offerings are tasty adn filling, and the prices make this a fine family place.

We love them. They love us. They even love our 2-year-old. That’s all you probably need to hear, but there’s more.

We go to Don Cuco’s about once a week, and we know the staff pretty much by face or name or both. They are unfailingly cheerful and attentive. They bring us large and generous servings of a standard Mexican-type menu, that does have a few stand-out entrees—Chicken Con Arroz being my favorite.

The Beloved Spouse and I mutually adore their Chicken Tortilla soup, and we end every meal with a fried ice cream to be shared with our toddler. The chips are free and just keep coming. The guac is tasty and the margueritas come in a rainbow of toothsome flavors.

What more can you ask? Half our neighborhood is in this place on any given weekend evening. Don Cuco’s in Acton really cooks.

Look, it’s Starbucks. Everything here tastes exactly the same as it does at every other Starbucks. Only 2 things make a difference, once you have accepted this fact: 1) the customer service at this particular branch and 2) the level of crowding.

1) It’s okay. The place tends to be fairly quiet, the staff seem to be contented, and you normally don’t have a long wait.

2) This comes right out of #1. This is a relatively empty Starbucks. Its cousin over in West Lancaster on K is jammed to the gills, while this one has its ebb and flow spells. I tend to hit this place during the ebb for some odd reason, so I prefer this one.

Don’t miss the iced green tea. Cheap, filling, skip the sweetener. Have them shake in 2 Splendas instead.

Every Sunday, by 6 PM, I am here, enjoying my perennial favorite—the spicy tuna bowl. This delight has a heap of sushi rice with a layer of delicious spicy tuna covering it. On top of the fish lies a mix of shredded cucumber, gobo strips, and some radish sprouts, with a swirl of freshly-sliced avocado in one corner of the wedge-shaped bowl. Other faves: the albacore anything—tender, sweet, high-quality albacore is a stand-out sushi/sashimi item here. Udon bowl—any type. Wonderful broth and generous noodles & veggies.

Drawbacks: erratic service, and the chef skimps on the spicy tuna bowls every so often by not filling in the corners of the bowl and hiding this by using the toppings as camouflage. So you do not always know how much you’re getting.

Major plus: they love my toddler and flirt outrageously with him. No small bonus, with a lively 2-year-old boy!

Small sushi area, good-sized teppan (benihana-style) cooking area. Good lunch, and the chefs seem to be as interesting at lunch as they are at dinner—a definite plus.

Teppan was tasty and the performance was delightful each time we went. Sushi was a little lackluster, with a limited selection and very average quality. Some of the fish tasted a little tougher than I’d expect.

The short answer: go for the teppan and you’ll probably really enjoy this place.

I have needed a few visits to adjust to enjoying excellent Lebanese food while being glowered over by the females who tend to wait tables here. Having said that, go, order the combination appetizer platter—hummus, stuffed grape leaves, tabouli, tsatsiki, pretty much what you’d expect—and bust a gut while not looking up at the staff ladies.

Excellent Middle-Eastern food, somewhat limited selection, but the flavors more than make up for any deficits.