Living in London, I met a ton of really interesting and fun people. Sadly, London does seem to be a transition stop for quite a few people. Luckily for me, a lot of people who left seem to find themselves somewhere in California, mostly the bay area. (Weirdly, you’d think New York as it’s more similar, but if they are anything like us, they came for the weather). My good friend Brian moved here in order to pursue his dreams of being an amazing chef. He was selling some home-made barrel-aged maple syrup, and I just had to get my hands on it, so I took the long trek over to Oakland to meet him to pick it up and to grab some lunch. He was keen to go someplace for the blog, and he knows my obsession with Mexican (pretty much every American in London had it) and had heard great things about Nido from some friends, so he decided we should head over to give it a try. On the way, we noticed a wine tasting room nearby, so we knew what we would be doing after we left.
It wasn’t too busy when we arrived (it was slightly before noon, and it definitely picked up as the lunch hour progressed), and we were shown to a table. The restaurant itself is lovely and decorated to give the place a homey and rustic fee. I decided to try one of the margaritas, which was touted on the menu to be a bit spicy. It was good, but I was expecting something with more of a kick to it. Sadly, I’ve had better margaritas at home, but it was fairly decent. We also ordered some chips and guacamole (because California = avocados) and perused the menu to decide what else we wanted. And I’m not going to lie, we waited quite some time for the server to come back. The service was sadly quite slow, but given we were in no hurry, it wasn’t that big of a deal. As you can see below, the chips and guac were served very strangely. Now “Nido” translates into “Nest” so maybe they were going for a nest in their plating, but all it did was to make it incredibly hard to eat. It was also nothing special; I make better guacamole at home. Sadly, I’ve even had better guacamole in London, and the disappointing start wasn’t giving me high hopes for the rest of the meal.
The first thing we decided to try was the torta with pibil pork. When it arrived, it looked pretty fantastic, and they were gracious enough to provide us a knife to cut it in half (because weirdly they wouldn’t do it in the kitchen). Sadly, the presentation fooled us, as the food itself was really lacking in a lot of flavor. There was no heat, no acid, it was just kind of a bland sandwich with quite a lot of beans on it. It was a huge let down.
We also decided to split the chicken mole quesadilla. I am a huge fan of mole sauce of all kinds, and any time I see it on a menu I want to order it. The tortilla was homemade, quite thick, and according to the menu had chile in it. Again, the menu read better than the food actually was, as the tortilla was very bland. So was the filling as the sauce was again lacking in a lot of areas. I’ve made mole at home, and it really drives me crazy when I know I can do a better job of things than a restaurant can. I’m no professional, but I do a pretty good job, so if I pay some place to eat, they should be able to it better, right?
We both left very disappointed. I once lived in New Mexico where the food is full of flavor, so it’s always shocking to me the places in California that just put incredibly bland and uninteresting Mexican food on a plate. I get the concept of home recipes; I cook a lot at home and not everything I make is spectacular and a flavor bomb. However, a restaurant is not a home,
and when we’re dining out, the food should have some sort of wow factor. Coupled with the lackluster service, it was a less than stellar experience. However, I had great company, and we did go around the corner and try some wines afterwards. For me, Nido is a big miss, and it’s definitely not worth the trek to that part of town.
Food: ★★☆☆☆
Service: ★★☆☆☆
Atmosphere: ★★★★☆
Value: ★★★☆☆
Overall: ★★☆☆☆
Nido
444 Oak Street
Oakland, CA 94607
What a bummer– Especially because the food looks so darn pretty!
I hope the wine-tasting went better…
Yeah. It does look amazing. I hate when that happens! And yeah, the wine tasting was great! But it usually is…