La Sandía Mexican Kitchen & Tequila Bar, Park Meadows, Lone Tree, Colorado
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| Food |  | Service | |
| Ambience |  | Prices | |
La Sandía is a (limited) chain restaurant, part of the Richard Sandoval Restaurants (other La Sandía locations are at Stapleton, CO, and Tysons Corner, VA, with one opening up in Santa Monica, CA, next year; Sandoval also has in Denver the Tamayo and Zengo restaurants). This one opened up a few months ago as part of the exterior courtyard of restaurants at the Park Meadows Mall in south-east metro Denver. We went in on a whim, though we’d had the place in our sights for a while.
Food: The restaurant describes itself as “modern Mexican cuisine.” Some of the recipes were innovative, but all were excellent, noteworthy for fresh, bold flavors — spiciness mixed with sweet, freshness in ingredients, in decent serving sizes.
I had a corn soup beforehand that was rich and sweet (Katherine joined me in eating it), and then carne asada for entree (beautifully prepared and presented, with savory black beans on the side and a lovely wrapped corn tamal. That sounds simple, but each part was beautifully done. I’m a general lover of Mexican food, but this wasn’t just shovel-it-in yum, but finely prepared meal.
Margie had rock shrimp civiche, which she noted was both spicy and sweet (the habernero/blood orange reduction evidently was a big part of this). She ordered the carnitas, which are her standard “test the Mexican restaurant” fare, which turned out to be a huge portion, well-made. It came with little tortillas and an assortment of sauces.
Katherine had a quesadilla from the kid’s menu, which wasn’t your usual “slap some grated cheese in a tortilla” kind of thing. there was also a small salad, some very savory refried beans, and she got a scoop of ice cream for dessert (we had a scoop, too, cinnamon, which nicely spicy rather than overly sweet).
La Sandía touts its huge tequila list, which it indeed has. We had three margaritas between Margie and me, each with a different tequila (all Blancas) — Coralejo, Cabo Wabo, and Casa Nobles. Each was distinct — I found the Cabo Wabo tastiest, but margie liked the Casa Nobles best. The nice thing about the margaritas is that the “sour mix” was prepared on-site with real fruit juices, not just glugged out of a bottle, and was mixed lightly enough in that you could taste the tequila, not just feel it. Nicely done.
Service: The server was attentive and helpful, and the food came out quickly (but not too quickly). He was also helpful in advising on tequilas and in explaining the menu.
Ambience: While the interior was nicely appointed and attractive, it was also full of hard surfaces and more than a bit noisy. The one down side to the proceedings.
Prices: The entrees run from $13-22. And even three margaritas at $7-9 each still worked out less than a bottle of wine. Excellent food, and in good quantities, for the price. We got out of there for less than we sometimes pay even at “lower class” restaurants.
Overall: This place was full of win. We will definitely be going back there again — and I’m not necessarily going to be the only one in the family suggesting it.
La Sandía, at The Vistas at Park Meadows, 8419 Park Meadows Center Dr, Lone Tree, CO 80124 – 303-586-5511
I need to look at the menu again to see if I can make it work for a vegetarian who can’t have acidic foods. I had written it off because of the high probability of unavoidable tomato.
Hmmmm. I did not look at it in that light, so I couldn’t say, sorry.
I would say that you should be able to find things without tomatoes. There was a lot of variety on the menu.
Did you know that Le Central does a gluten free dinner every month?