No way.., for Tex-Mex you’re going to want to get the cheese enchiladas, and beef fajitas.
Those are the most iconic and indicative Tex-Mex dishes. If they don’t do those well, the rest is unlikely to be better. Honorable mention for tamales and chiles relleno.
As far as Thai food goes, I’d say red curry and Tom Yum or Tom Kha soup.
I’m still really flummoxed by the OP’s Thai restaurant only having red curry. Is that a regional cuisine thing? I don’t know a ton about Thai food, other than liking pretty much everything on the menu.
For a Tex Mex restaurant, the tortillas are the quickest way to make a judgment. If the tortillas are bad, it’s likely the rest of the food will be bad as well. If the tortillas are good, it’s possible that there might be one or two other things on the menu that aren’t also good, but most likely everything else will be good.
The OP hasn’t told us where he is. Expectations about restaurants are very different between major cities, small cities, and small towns. Also very different regionally.
The OP may be in a real “food desert” by coastal urban standards.
You could call where I live a small city, but it has certainly seen it’s ups and downs and these days aren’t even close to the greatest it’s ever been.
When it thrived that first prosperity was due to cutting down ALL the trees and shipping that lumber via the local waterways. There was the fishing industry. Then it was the railroads and not to forget the ‘underground railroad’. Then it was the auto industry and the ancillary manufacturing that supported it, and prohibition made a lot of people rich because it’s on the border with Canada and then more industry that supported these residents.
But all that has faded at best and nothing substantive in my estimation has replaced it.
“Food desert”? Not exactly but it is limited in diversity to put it kindly.
I was speaking of Thai-specific regionalities, not American. I doubt Thai cuisine changes where you are in the States, but would likely change depending on where the chef/restauranteurs may be from.
I’d say that good tortillas (i.e. made in house, preferably by the tortilla ladies) are a sure bet that the food will be good. Fair to middling tortillas (locally commercially produced at a tortilleria nearby) make it much more of a crap shoot.
But any place that uses some kind of bagged national brand like Mission or La Banderita is more than likely going to have bad food. It’s one of those low-bar, attention to detail things, and probably a pretty sure bet that they’re not catering to anyone who actually knows tortillas and Mexican/Tex-Mex food.
I did a bit of research and found that although curries in Thailand differ by region, the three kinds of curry paste (green, red, and yellow) are not the distinguishing ingredients. A Thai restaurant anywhere just serving red curries is very peculiar.
Why not? Pizza changes based on where you are in the States, so why shouldn’t Thai?
That’s what I thought too.
And about the Pad Thai I got that I felt was too sweet: The balance between the major flavor players within the dish was way off, with sweetness not just more noticeable but overwhelming. And I can’t remember ever getting Pad Thai anywhere that didn’t come with a portion of a lime on the side. I ordered during a less than busy time of day too.
You have a good point there.
Conversely, I was suggesting that the variety of Thai that will be successfully sold in LA or NYC is wider than the variety that will sell in Smallville, Ohio.
The consuming public in Smallville does not have wide ranging palates and a new restaurateur may have to stick to the simplest, most Americanized dishes; at least at first.
Even a Smallville ice cream parlor has Chocolate and Strawberry in addition to Vanilla. Green and yellow curry paste is just as ubiquitous in Thai cuisine.