where jess ate

At 5:45pm on a Saturday, fifteen minutes before Grand Electric opened, Mike and I arrived to see a line of about twenty people outside the restaurant. Given that the space isn’t very large, I was afraid we’d have to wait for the next seating. Fortunately, they had space for the two of us at the bar.

The people behind Grand Electric are ex-Black Hoofer’s: Colin Tooke and Ian McGrenaghan. You can certainly see the resemblance the two restaurants! No hard feelings though as I could have sworn I saw someone wearing a Black Hoof t-shirt.

Since I was starving when we arrived I wanted to order the entire menu. But Mike likes to say that my mouth often writes cheques my stomach can’t cash… in the end we actually ordered everything except the guacamole with chips and the Ensalada Electrico. But don’t be too impressed – the menu wasn’t very big.

The first thing that arrived was the Spicy Squid ($9), which was served on top of a fried tortilla. The dish consisted of squid rings coated in a sweet and tangy sauce and topped with green onions, cilantro and small chunks of avocado. Although the dish wasn’t quite as “spicy” as the menu had indicated I’m not complaining. The flavours of the dish worked perfectly. For those of you who have tried the squid dish at Guu, this dish was quite similar in flavour. This dish was a great start to a fabulous meal.

Our second dish, the Chipotle Shrimp ($8.50) arrived quickly and was topped with peanuts, cilantro and mint leaves. Similar to the spicy squid, this dish was also served on a fried tortilla. Since I love shrimp sashimi, I was happy to see that the shrimp was slightly raw. I’m not sure if I’d describe the dish was “chipotle” shrimp, but it was delicious.

Then came the highlight of the meal – the tacos! Grand Electric has six different types of tacos at $3.50 each. Since they all sounded delicious, we decided to order them all.

The first one I tried was the Fried Queso & Poblano Taco. The taco consisted of sautéed poblao and a fat piece of lightly fried cheese, topped with green onions. I loved the cheese which was mild in flavour and had a nice chewy texture to it. The sautéed poblanos were also nice and surprisingly wasn’t very spicy. Tasty!

The next taco I sunk my teeth into was the Beef Cheek Taco. The meat was incredibly tender and was topped with green onions, onions, jalapenos, cilantro and avocado. When the server brought the tacos over he suggested we put a bit of hot sauce on it to kick it up a notch. We took his advice and it made a big difference! Compared to all the other tacos this one was most subtle in flavour.

Next up was the Pork Belly Al Pastor Taco, one of my favourites of the evening. The pork belly was nice and fatty, just like pork belly should be. Similar to many of the other tacos, this one was topped with cilantro and onions. This taco in particular was topped with small chunks of pineapple which added some sweetness to the dish which worked perfectly. Absolute perfection!

One taco I was really excited to try was the Baja Fish Taco, since I’m always looking for a solid fish taco. And wow, the one here at Grand Electric blew me away. The taco was an explosion of flavours in my mouth and even with all the toppings on it, I could still taste the fish which was nicely fried. Another finger-licking good taco. This was miles better than the fish tacos I tried at the Combine Eatery.

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