Las Cazuelas Restaurant

If I had not eaten here a number of times before, I would have given them one star. However, aside from the last couple of times I visited this little restaurant, it has had really good food and the service has been pretty good. Having said that, I must share my last experience here. My husband and I went for lunch, we ordered an appetizer but his meal came out before the appetizer so we said just to cancel the appetizer. The waitress was very persistent that the appetizer was almost ready so in the interest of appeasing her, we told her she could bring it out. Ten minutes later, she brought it out. This ended up being a good thing because my food didn’t come out until my husband was completely done eating and we had been waiting for a long time! This was frankly a very unpleasant experience and I would have thought they would have offered some sort of compensation but nope, rang us up and acted like nothing had happened. I was very disappointed in this experience and in how it was all just swept under the table with no apologies.

Homey small restaurant with authentic Mexican food, which is cooked to order. Delicious! As a perk, it's attached to Carnicería El Rey (a butcher shop), where we purchased jalapeño burgers, ground beef, a roast, and both sweet and hot Italian sausage, seasoned perfectly. Definitely a must-stop if passing through Deming, NM on I 10.

We went in starving. You see, we had already hiked City of Rocks State Park, driven about 200 miles to see interesting sites, and put an extra couple miles on our feet looking for hidden objects. We rolled into Deming in that generally slow set of hours between lunch and dinner rushes, and pulled up to the outside of the building. You could smell the undeniable aroma of grilling meat and roasting chile from the parking lot, which only added to our appetites. We were seated relatively quickly in the small dining room, where only one other table was occupied. There was a party of 10 at that table, but they looked well settled in so we thought nothing of it. The singular waitress came and took our drink order, then wandered off, and we discussed options. She wandered back moments later with some truly wonderful chips and salsa, but we had not quite settled our debate yet, so we asked for one more minute. That minute turned into 10, and another group came in, were seated, and full drink and dinner orders taken before we were able to flag down the waitress again. Raz ordered a steak, and insisted I get the Churrasco Plate for two. I knew that was far, far too much food, but I wasn't going to debate any further when the Waitress finally graced our table again. Then the wait began in earnest. My phone had been dangerously low on batteries when I'd come through the door, so occupying myself with games was right out, and both Raz and I had reached the point of hangry, so conversation was also right out. We took turns strolling the isles of the little market that also shares the building with the butcher and the restaurant. I'd probably have had time to review the entire trip and post it had I both battery power and mental focus during that seemingly interminable wait. Every second seemed worth it, though, when I sank my teeth into the first strips of grilled, seasoned beef. Raz's steak was perfectly done and the beefiness was perfectly complemented by salt, pepper, and a light smokiness. In addition to the beef, my churrasco included marinated, grilled pork and chicken, and grilled sausage and vegetables. Every last bit of it was perfection in the mouth, tender and savory and smoky, with faintly crisped and charred edges that added depth to the overall flavor. Even having been hungry enough to tackle the cow in the field and start eating it before cooking, the both of us couldn't finish the steak and churrasco, but what packed down into the cooler for a midnight snack was barely a quarter of the churrasco's original portion, and no steak remained at all. We're likely to come back next time we are in Deming, and we'll see if the wait is eliminated so that we can give a fifth star.