It was the first gorgeous spring weekend this year and I was out enjoying the day with a nice drive around Lexington. I ended up near Chinoe Road and thinking about where I might want to grab lunch I remembered there was an interesting looking Mexican restaurant near Kroger that I had wanted to try out for some time.

While I’ve certainly not yet eaten at every Mexican restaurant in Lexington, I think I can say with some confidence that this might be the best looking one in town. The whole restaurant is massive and painted in vibrant blue, yellow, and red. On a beautiful day like the one I visited on, the natural light coming through these massive windows just further intensifies the vibrance of the restaurant.

Their menu contains most of the typical greatest hits that you’d find at nearly every Mexican restaurant, nothing really stood out as a specialty that I felt I absolutely had to try. I started with a small order of queso ($3.99) to work on while I figured out what I wanted as my main dish.

I won’t spend too much time describing the queso. It’s delicious melted cheese, how can you go wrong there? It wasn’t mixed with any sort of peppers that stood out and didn’t have any kick. The only somewhat interesting thing about it was that it managed to stay rather thick while still being warm. As I mentioned in my review of El Charro, most quesos tend to get rather liquidy when they are hot. For someone eating solo, this is a good portion at a good price (5.5/10).

I ended up ordering a lunch portion of Chile Colorado as my main meal ($8.99). The dish comes with the typical sides of beans and rice with warm flour tortillas for the chile’d pork. The cuts of pork itself were good though perhaps not as fall-apart as you might get with carnitas. The real star of the dish was the sauce the pork was cooked in. The first thing I noticed was that the sauce was fairly thick like you would get after letting it reduce over time. There was a nice spice to the sauce from the dried chiles that warmed the mouth without burning it while at the same time providing a good depth of flavor. The tortillas were nice but you could easily eat this without ever touching one (6.5/10).

El Azteca is a gorgeous restaurant where you can get some pretty good classic Mexican food. If they were to take some risks and make their menu as bold as their interior design, I think they could very easily become one of the best places to eat in Lexington.