Every diner is greeted as an amigo by the owner of the popular restaurant that specializes in ‘homestyle Mexican food’
Alfie Lau
Sun
Paul Senties, owner of Ole Ole Restaurant, displays a few Mexican dishes. Photograph by : Mark van Manen, Vancouver Sun
Raul Senties may be the friendliest restaurateur in the Royal City. Senties, who operates Ole Ole Mexican Restaurant in New Westminster, greets all customers by calling them friends or amigos.
On a quiet Sunday night, myself and two friends, along with their three-year-old daughter, decided to try the offerings of Senties and his chef Lui.
“Hello my friends,” he greeted us as we entered. “Please sit, make yourself comfortable and I’ll serve you some of my homestyle Mexican food.”
The simple two-page menu includes old standbys such as nachos, tacos, burritos, quesadillas and chimichangas. But it’s not the stuff you’d find in fast food Mexican restaurants.
For example, Senties prides himself on serving traditional Mexican cuisine prepared with the freshest ingredients. That means when you order guacamole, the avocados are sliced almost before your eyes and the resulting dish is a natural green, not the nuclear colour you’ll find in a store-bought dip.
For our appetizers, we decided to start with the nachos with beans and cheese and a cocktail de camarones, the shrimp cocktail.
“What does the little girl want?” Senties asked politely. When we said she’d have a bit of each appetizer, that wasn’t enough for our newfound friend.
“Let me get her something for herself,” he said. “Kids always like to have their own plates.”
And before we knew it, Lui had put together a kid’s-size quesadilla with melted cheese for our smallest diner.
For our mains, we decided on the steak ranchero, steak served in an enchilada with rice, beans and guacamole; the pollo a la Mexicana, the chicken cooked in tomato salsa with rice and beans; and the carnitas, the barbecued Mexican pork served with a soft tortilla, rice, beans and guacamole.
The portion sizes were generous without being too large and the meat was cooked to its proper tenderness for all three mains. The chicken, a huge thigh and drumstick, was done so well that the meat came off in strips, perfect for both mom and daughter to eat without making too much of a mess.
Dad was loving his steak, which was cooked medium rare and had that beautiful shade of pink when slicing into the meat. And I loved my pork, which was leaner than I expected — it must have been a tenderloin cut — but no less flavourful than some of the fatty pork meals I can’t resist.
All items on the menu cost less than $10 and the four of us ate for less than $48 before tip.
“I really hope you had a great meal, my friends,” Senties told me later in a telephone interview, explaining that he grew up in a small town near Mexico City.
His dishes are traditional recipes borrowed from his mother.
“Come again, my friend,” he adds, at the end of the phone interview.
“Almost everybody who’s come here becomes a friend.”
Alfie Lau is a freelance writer.
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AT A GLANCE
Ole Ole Mexican restaurant
831 12th St., New Westminster
Open every day from 12 noon to 9 p.m., except Sundays, when it closes at 7 p.m. 604-540-7435.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007