Bob's BBQ And Mexican Grill Restaurant Review

Today for lunch, I went out with Pui to (full disclosure alert:) my best friend Bob's new food court restaurant at Carrefour. I wasn't around for the grand opening on July 1st, so this was my first visit to the new place.

The booth that Bob has built is really quite nice, with little Tex-Mex doodads dotting the entire place. However, as this is nothing but a food court stable, I won't dally on the decor.

I've eaten a lot of Bob's BBQ food in my day, so I kept my meal choices limited to the new side of Bob's menu: Bob's Mexican Grill... which is comprised of traditional recipes brought to Thailand by Bob's partner in this venture, Mexican food guru Sam, a retired police officer from San Antonio.

One of the goals of Bob's food court joint is to keep prices down. Eating at Bob's main restaurant on Pattaya South Road can leave diners with a bit of sticker shock... especially when they ponder the possibility of ordering an $11 hamburger. (That is notwithstanding the fact that such a hamburger weighs in at 2 pounds, making it comparable by weight-to-price to an equivalent amount of McDonald's hamburgers.) Here at Carrefour, Bob is targeting the Thai market, and thus most of the Mexican dishes are in the 30 to 50 baht range (80 cents to $1.20). Additionally, Bob's standard fare of hot dogs, chili dogs, miniature hamburgers (McDonald's-sized), small racks of ribs, et cetera are available at reduced prices.


Bob's BBQ and Mexican Grill
offers a fair amount of low-
priced dishes. (The cheese
quesadilla in this photo is
half-eaten, as I got peckish.)For lunch, I started off with a cheese quesadilla (70 baht), which was the most expensive thing I ordered, and while quite good was a little boring... although a cheese quesadilla is not supposed to be anything more than two tortillas with cheese melted between them... which is exactly what it was. I recommend adding the (exceptionally rare for Thailand) guacamole for 30 baht and homemade sour cream for 10 baht to the mix to flavor it up a little bit (or opting for a chicken quesadilla instead).

I also had traditional beans (25 baht) and rice (20 baht), which was nice. I ordered roll tacos (39 baht), which were chicken tacos rolled up like a cigar and deep fried. Those were also good, but I'm going to have to talk to Bob about making some kind of salsa available with some of these dishes.

Finally, I had a "taco el pastor" for 19 baht, which is a marinated chicken taco. That was an unreserved smash hit. For all you lunch breakers out there, I recommend going to Bob's and ordering 3 el pastor tacos, a side of guacamole, a side of sour cream, and an order of rice and beans, and going crazy. You'll spend 142 baht and get filled to the brim with some really good Mexican food. The rest of the menu is quite passable as well, but the above is going to be my standing order... at least until Bob unleashes his shrimp burrito next month. Stay tuned for that.

The one major complaint I have... and this is unfortunately something that Bob can do nothing about... is that you cannot buy drinks at Bob's. Instead, you have to walk the entire length of the food court (all the way back, and all they way across) to the drinks counter. If you are going to eat at Bob's, make sure you buy your drinks first before hiking across the food court to Bob's spot, to save yourself the walk.