R’s Americantina
410 Thompson Creek Mall
Stevensville, Md.
410-643-7700, http://www.rsamericantina.com
Open Sun.-Thurs., 11 a.m.-11 p.m.;
Fri. & Sat. 11 a.m.-midnight
Atmosphere: A little bit family-friendly, a little bit bar-frenzied
Service: Enthusiastic
Don’t miss: Drunken beans, grilled chicken enchiladas
Tariff: Appetizers, $4-$10; sandwiches & entrees, $8-$24
If you notice an unusual amount of traffic heading into Thompson Creek Mall, it’s not because Food Lion is having a sale on pork chops. Instead, the long line of SUVs looking for parking are circling the terracotta-colored, box-like building that is Stevensville’s newest concept restaurant, R’s Americantina.
Featuring what restaurant CEO Richard Gamble terms “Ameri-Mex” cuisine (described as “85 percent Mexican plus 15 percent American favorites"), R’s Americantina is the brainchild of the restaurant’s owner, Rick Sarmiento, the founder and former CEO/president of the White House|Black Market chain of women’s clothing stores. Gamble told me that Sarmiento, a resident of Kent Island, had always wanted to open a Mexican restaurant because he noticed that “the needs of the population here were not being met.”
“More and more, Kent Island is becoming a bedroom community for Annapolis, Baltimore, and D.C.” says Gamble, “and there’s no real family, chain-style restaurant here.” (The restaurant, which opened in October 2007, is the first of a hundred venues the company plans to open nationwide over the next ten years.) “We have that mass appeal that people can look at from the outside or the inside and see that this is the kind of place they like to go to.”
On both of my visits, this appeared to be true. At lunch and dinner, a cross section of Kent Island—from retirees to families with small children to men in dusty jeans and metal-toed construction boots—filled the dining room’s booths and tables, downing iced tea and tortilla chips to the din created by throbbing techno music bouncing off the concrete floors.
On each visit, our server brought a basket of chips and salsa to the table immediately, and by the second visit, the warm and addictive golden chips were interspersed with brilliant red and green ones. It’s hard to go wrong with crispy tortilla chips, and R’s Americantina hasn’t—but their salsa could use some help.
The consistency of canned crushed tomatoes; it had no spicy zip or zing.
The majority of appetizers on the restaurant’s menu are fried and seem like fast-food interpretations of Mexican food—Mayan wings, chorizo [potato] skins, chipotle onion rings, chili-dusted calamari—so we chose guacamole instead, even though the restaurant charges a whopping $7 for a small bowl. The menu explained that the guacamole is made by hand, but if so, the hand was a heavy one, obliterating any chunky texture that you’d normally find in fresh guacamole. The result was a silky puree, bordering on almost greasy, and although the dip was studded with small bits of tomatoes, the flavor lacked brightness.
We knew we risked being repetitive ordering shrimp-stuffed avocados from the menu’s featured region of Guadalajara, but the description made it sound different from guacamole, promising “ripe avocado filled with tender shrimp, tomato, onion, green olives, roasted garlic, peppers, and drizzled with olive oil.” What we got was a split avocado filled with the same guacamole (only this time it was refrigerator frigid), with a tiny shrimp perched on top—no olives, no peppers, no roasted garlic that I could taste.
My advice is to pass on this one.
The menu also boasts that “the heart of the house is our wood-fired flatbread kiln” and promises “flats,” or flatbreads, that are “thin and crunchy.” After two attempts, I can testify that the flats are neither. (Though that didn’t seem to faze other diners; at lunchtime, it seemed like nearly half the restaurant was eating the pizza-like flats.) Both the steak and huitlacoche (a corn fungus used in traditional Mexican cooking) and the messy-looking picante shrimp and chorizo yielded thick and doughy crusts, layered with tasteless generic pizza cheese. At dinner, we ate two small flavorless pieces and took the rest home, where it sat in my refrigerator for a week before I remembered it was there.
Other entrées were marginally better. The drunken beans were smoky and tender. A chicken enchilada was serviceable in its simplicity, and the pulled pork barbacoa sandwich was inoffensive, if bland, as was the taco salad.
I had considered ordering ceviche as an appetizer, but I’m glad I didn’t, as the salmon in one of my fish tacos was decidedly fishy.
Desserts also disappointed. The sopapillas tasted like Pepperidge Farm turnovers, but not as crispy or buttery, and flan was strangely chewy rather than silky. Serving local City Dock Coffee is a definite plus, though.
Also positive was the enthusiastic and well-meaning staff. Unfailingly cheery and polite, from the young hostesses to the bartenders to the servers, these folks want to make sure you’re enjoying yourself. I was particularly impressed with a bartender who, after mixing a margarita for me, was dissatisfied at how it turned out and immediately decided to make me another. And I can imagine that that kind of attentive service, plus the long list of margarita-inspired cocktails, tequila flights, and bottled beers that fill the beverage menu, will draw substantial bar crowds on the weekends.
CEO Gamble told me that he hopes the restaurant will be “the PF Chang’s of Mexican” and that he “wants to make [Mexican food] more mainstream, hipper, enjoyable.” Based on the dozens of diners flocking to R’s Americantina during its initial weeks, this goal seems within reach. The question is, will they return?
Mary K. Zajac writes from Baltimore.
