Best Mexican (or any ethnic for that matter) food in Connecticut

Baja's Authentic Mexican Restaurant
63 Boston Post Rd
Orange, CT 06477

This place is a huge surprise in the vast landscape of rural suburbia that is the whole CT state. Mr Z and I happened upon it when I first moved to CT for the summer and we were looking for a place to change the car oil. It was mid-day Sunday, hot and humid and I had had nothing to eat all day taking me to the dangerous point of grumpiness. We found a place in Orange Town and then decided to walk to whatever was closest to eat. That happened to be Baja’s – it looked so terrible from the outside that I almost refused to go in. We only went because I was so terribly hungry and we were stuck car-less for 45 min. What a spectacular surprise that was – this place has top-grade, delicious, well-cooked, well-spiced fresh food and a delectable salsa bar serving various very unboring kinds. Mr. Z and I have since turned the place into a sort of weekend brunch ritual. We have gotten many dishes over the course of the summer, all very pleasing to our palate. The ceviche appetizer is to-die for. Mr. Z declared he hadn’t had such tasty ceviche since South America. We usually don’t do dessert (too full usually and a last attempt to avoid pigging out) but we made an exception at Baja’s – and what a fabuuulous detour that was – the Banana Flautas are rum-doused bananas * chocolate chips wrapped in tortillas and deep fried, served up with orange ice-cream and chocolate syrup. Absolutely AMAZING!

Pros: great salsa bar, amazing seafood, carne asada, quesadilla, low prices, friendly & unpretentious service, Banana Flautas, amazing find in CT (given 99% of places serve either/or American, Italian)

Cons: the ambiance, the ambiance, the ambiance. It’s run-down, classless, charmless, with extremely cheap furniture and decorations and to boot, it gives the impression it is not the cleanest of places either. I have no idea why the owners don’t renovate this place – it seems the business has been there for a while, it always has a buzzing inflow of customers, the place even got a shout-out in the New York Times a couple years ago, as a newspaper clip on the wall attests. If one pays attention, a lot of customers just come to pick up the food to go – well no wonder, since the place looks so abysmally dingy. The fellow crowd doesn’t help much either. A lot of “local” folk add to the low-class atmosphere.