Chevy's

2 Embarcadero Center

Tel: 415-391-2323

To this day, I still can't decide which of the three Chevy's locations in San Francisco is the most hideous.

The Stonestown location is generally packed with families from the Outer Sunset programming their kids into thinking that Chevy's is a nice, wholesome restaurant and SF State frat boys who believe that drinking margaritas at Chevy's is a classy alternative to MGD at the house.

The Embarcadero Center restaurant is filled with obnoxious yuppies ready for a night out on the town in a really bad North Beach bar or, worse yet, an evening of faux intellectual development seeing the latest "indie film" (read: low-budget Hollywood movie) from the Weinstein Brothers, et al. at the nearby Landmark Theatre.

Then there's the 4th Street Chevy's that's, for the most part, populated with refugees from the most recent business convention.

Still, Chevy's keeps busy. All three locations thrive. But in an atmosphere trying to piece together the worst aspects of third-rate Americanized Mexican culture, the Tex-Mex food isn't as bad as it could be (even if the menu layout is more Denny's than true Mexican restaurant). Eight to ten bucks, though, is pretty steep, particularly when you get more food with more kick for a hell of a lot less at Mom Is Cooking or El Farolito in the Mission.

So diluted is the taste at Chevy's and so homogenized are the menus that one wonders the appeal. But, hey, those chips and salsa are mighty tasty!

Well, frankly, kid, I'm not impressed.

Think about it: How hard is it to bake chips and chop up tons of peppers and produce for salsa? Not really difficult at all, particularly when you're a restaurant with the resources of Chevy's.

The ultimate symbol of Chevy's is that little nacho cheese chip they place on your entrée -- you know, the one shaped like a cactus. Every time you order one of the combination plates, it's a big lie. So little is spread around so big a plate that it seems hardly worth the effort of preparing it. What they don't give you in terms of enchilada, they compensate for with beans and rice.

Call me crazy, but when I slap down just under ten bucks for a meal, I'm not paying for the god damned plate.

The tamales are miniscule. The rice tastes as if it's been sitting under a heater for some time. The enchiladas are so small that not even one of the Seven Dwarves could be satisfied, even with Snow White looking on.

And in the middle of this misleading meal, there's that cactus, that unmistakable symbol that is supposed to make Chevy's legit. Hey, we're Mexican! We're Fresh Mex! In fact, Chevy's tries very hard to hide behind this façade of Tex-Mex culture.

Between the scattered remnants of items dubiously tied to Mexico and Texas perched above to the tiny Mexican flags in the drinks, Chevy's is a restaurant trying to pass itself off as something grander than it really is, misleading you the same way that Taco Bell does.

Theirs, however, is a sadder case than other forms of Americanization. Consider Chevy's margaritas. They taste about as harmless as a Slurpee. A lightweight couldn't get remotely buzzed off of three. Upon finishing one, tasting mucho margarita mix/elements (it tasted like mix to me) and practically no tequila, I was tempted to throttle the twenty year-old bartender and lecture him on the nature of tequila and other liquors. But I realized that it wasn't his fault. He was merely misinformed.

The kids who work here seem equally confused too in terms of service. It was a bitch getting my tepid margarita, leaving me hunched over the table with the aforementioned chips and salsa and some water. Having worked as a waiter myself in my college years, I'm amazed that these kids don't realize the importance of drinks -- 'specially alcoholic ones.

Yet, well after I had the goods in front of me, they all kept coming round every five minutes. Everything okay? Are you enjoying your meal? Can I get your more water? (He never asked if I wanted another margarita.) Yeah, yeah, yeah, where the hell were you when I actually needed you? Who knows? Maybe they were paranoid because I had a notebook in my hand.

Chevy's is good for the individual who believes that anything labeled burrito must be burrito, but little else. I don't understand how anyone can trust a place that spends more time cutting a nacho cheese chip into a cactus pattern than they do cooking a mean meal.

Other Chevy's are located at 4th Street, San Francisco, CA, (415) 543-8060 and 3251 20th Avenue (at Stonestown), San Francisco, CA (415) 665-8705.

Edward Champion

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