On another lone-wolf Wednesday, my quest for food took me south on Buford Highway.  As I was driving and looking for a place, I recalled having seen Don Pedro (Real Mexican Food) about two weeks ago, while going elsewhere, and the parking lot was absolutely packed.  And packed with trucks (that’s always a good sign).  Today, when I arrived around 11:40, there were only a couple of other cars there.  I parked, walked inside and was confronted with a counter and pictures of twenty specials.  I asked the young lady behind the counter what she would recommend, and she said, “We have all this…”, pointed at the pictures and started reading them to me.  Not a boatload of help.

I decided on number twenty, which appeared to be a grilled chicken breast with rice and beans, a grilled pepper and a wild onion.  There was a cooler to my left full of Jaliscos, Mexican Cokes and, at the very bottom, some Senoral.  Believing these to be my only beverage choices, I went with the Senoral.  If you aren’t familiar with Sonoral, it is a carbonated sangria-flavored soft drink from Mexico.  It tastes, to me, like funkified Southern Baptist communion wine mixed with soda water.  I realize that’s not an overly flattering description, but it’s a taste I have acquired over the last several years (they sell it at the Food Depot near the house).  After I was seated, I did see that there was a soda fountain back around the corner.

I walked over to the far side of the restaurant and found a table, then went back up to the condiment counter.  I dipped a small plastic container of both the red sauce and the green sauce for myself, grabbed a really thick plastic knife and fork, walked back to the table and waited for them to call my name/number/order (I wasn’t really sure what I was waiting for).  After about fifteen minutes, the same young lady called “ticket 14 – chicken breast” and I went and gathered my meal.

I dipped my fork into the red sauce, tasted it and found it to have the near perfect amount of “heat”, put some on the chicken and started to slicing.  A few minutes later she came back out to tell me I had forgotten my tortillas.  Score!  They were small corn tortillas so hot that I could barely touch them, but I did anyway.

That little corn tortilla, filled with sliced chicken, beans (which were close to churros), rice and that hot red sauce were absolutely delicious.  I ate all four tortillas, along with the chicken, rice beans and didn’t find myself hungry for the rest the day.  As I sat there, the place got progressively fuller and by the time I left, there was only one parking spot remaining other than the one I was vacating.  I can see why people show up – it was really really good.  The sign says real Mexican food I believe that it is.