Local Spotlight: Los Gordos Restaurant

Ashland has a lot of restaurants, and getting noticed isn't always easy. We have celebrity cooks and celebrity diners to go with our two-block traffic jams, but often enough, on an ordinary day, we don't feel like celebrities and it is a delight to hang out in the early afternoon, drink cold beer and eat nachos with fresh guacamole and salsa. At times like that, you will want to go straight down to the Underground Shops on the corner of 3rd Street and East Main. That's across the main drag from Evos, nextdoor and downstairs from Lowdown, for those of you who navigate by landmarks. The cook is Steve Sumrell, who dishes up fresh-cooked mexican food from a galley-sized kitchen. His salsa is always fresh and varied. I enjoy breakfast for lunch, and a beer before sunset. Steve's scrambled eggs a la mexicana, with some fresh beans and hot tortillas are just the meal to attack along with a frosty pint of local ale, or a bottle of Negro Modelo, Corona, Bohemia, or one of the other Mexican beers Steve stocks. The Los Gordos burritos are heartily constructed, and during the daily happy hour featuring local microbrews for $2.50 each, it's a good place to while away the afternoon and come away well-nourished and adequately lubricated. Los Gordos is in good company down in the Underground mall. Anubis tattoo is down there, and the man behind it, local entrepreuneur and fashion maven Ruben Davis, is obviously planning on mounting a fashion invasion from this heretofore obscure location. Discover it before others and tell them you heard it from the AFP: The Underground Mall is happening. It won't be long before it's jammed with posers, squeezing out the pure purveryors of spontaneous music and poetry. But be they mere posers and faux poets, so long as they are hungry, thirsty, and possessed of a merely a few dead presidents, Los Gordos will welcome them with open arms. — Nola Tengo