Don Pancho

While helping renovate a house for my sister-in-law in Kentucky, we had to get the heck out of the house and into the real world, even if just for a meal. She asked what my preference was and I told her one of my favorite cuisines is Mexican food. When she used to live in Kentucky, she and her friends used to go to Don Pancho's frequently, and so it was decided. The Don Pancho in Oak Grove, which is the one we went to, is one of four locations. The original opened in 2002 in Clarksville, Tennessee. In 2004, they opened the second restaurant in Jackson, TN, a third location in Ashland City in 2006, and then finally a fourth location in Oak Grove in 2007. They have plans of continuing to expand to other areas in the near future.

For an appetizer, we ordered the cheese dip. It was amazing, and cheesy? I don't really know how else to describe it. I don't know if it was made with melted Queso Blanco or Fresca, or if they used a white cheddar like some other Mexican restaurants use, but it was a damn good cheese dip. We went through a whole basket of chips and then some.

My sister-in-law and husband both ordered the Armando Special. It is a grilled piece of chicken topped with white cheese and ranchera sauce (they forgot to add the cheese sauce to  my husband's). It came with a side of mixed veggies, rice, guacamole, pico, sour cream and shrimp on a stick. I tried a bite of my husband's chicken and it was really good. The only catch is that he got his fifteen minutes before we got the rest of our food. The waitress kept coming to our table and apologizing for the wait, but he waited as long as he could to start eating his before it was technically cold, and we still were waiting on our dinner.

I ordered the Monster Chimichanga with chicken. Monster size you say? Challenge accepted. It came topped with a white cheese sauce, salad, guacamole, pico and sour cream on the side, and a side of rice and refried beans. I'll hand it to them, it was pretty big. It came wrapped up inside of a 12 inch tortilla shell. They say it was "deep fried" but mine wasn't crunchy, or greasy, so I'm not complaining on the latter half of that situation.

Don't mind the red sauce, it's just salsa that I added on top. The picture gives you a better view of the inside mixture of the chimichanga that had sauteed onions, and what I believe was spinach? Regardless of what the green stuff was, it was a great chimichanga. I'm proud to say I finished a little over half of it and took the rest to go.

For dessert my husband ordered the special which was a Snickers Burrito (or chimichanga?). I stole a bite from him and it was well, very rich for starters but how can you go wrong when you wrap snickers up in a tortilla bundle and deep fry it? It was topped with whipped cream, a caramel, chocolate and cherry drizzle, and a maraschino cherry.

Us ladies decided to split the churros. They were light and fluffy and topped with the same toppings as the snickers burrito. Perfect sweet ending to an already massive meal.

As far as the service goes, our waitress was wonderful. She answered our questions while ordering without being condescending, and frequently apologized for our food taking very random times to get to our table. Someone in the kitchen was either overwhelmed by orders (we were one out of four tables because it was past 8 PM when we got there), or something was messed up and they lost our ticket for a while. Whatever the scenario was, it was a delicious meal and I almost had to roll myself out of the restaurant.

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