Zen West Roadside Cantina

Zen West Roadside Cantina Restaurant Review:

Everybody loves a road trip --- or would, if such trips still included roadside attractions, Burma Shave signs, and the funky tin-roofed badlands cantinas that all Tex-Mex joints would like to evoke. Zen West (kin to the nearby Café Zen, which offers strictly Asian cuisine) is a sleek urban restaurant, with pendant lamps and hardwood floors and a bar embedded with tiny lights. But it also recalls those bygone road trip days, decorating its dining room with such kitschy-but-fun artifacts as a vintage gas pump and a mural of Route 66. The menu is a similar urban-cowboy mix: big platters of chicken fried steak, barbecued ribs, blackened catfish, and all the Tex-Mex favorites. If things get hectic, settle in with a notably chunky, lime-laced guacamole and a margarita or Dos Equis, and work on your Zen attitude until the entrées arrive.