Some poor soul at the agency drew the short straw and volunteered to play office hero, making a midday food run to Cinco de Mayo in Jefferson City. They hauled the loot back to the breakroom, stripping away any illusion of restaurant ambiance and forcing this grub to stand completely naked under the depressing buzz of flickering fluorescent lights. This was a high stakes desk lunch engineered to break up the monotony of mapping out raw, unvarnished travel itineraries, but it quickly devolved into a culinary coin toss.

The culinary opening act featured the standard baseline offering of chips and dip.

The chips themselves were thin, properly fried, and tasty, delivering a respectable crunch, but the house salsa possessed all the radical excitement of lukewarm tap water. It was pure survival fuel, a bowl of red tinted complacency that you absentmindedly plunge starch into while building an intense itinerary for a client escaping to the remote, craggy wilderness of the Pamir Highway in Tajikistan. This salsa did not have a personality, it just had a pulse.

The chips and dip earned a score of 2.5 out of 5.

Then the absolute heartbreak arrived in the form of the elote.

Street corn is supposed to be a glorious, messy masterpiece of crema, cotija cheese, chili powder, and sweet kernels. Instead, this absolute Zapatistrayal of an appetizer cost seven dollars for one single corn cob. Even with the house menu lowering the price from the online rate, paying seven dollars for a single ear of corn smeared with a pathetic whisper of mayonnaise, cheese, and chili powder is completely insane.

The kitchen utilized incredibly young corn with minuscule, underdeveloped kernels that clung to the cob like a set of testicles after diving headfirst into freezing cold water. The moisture content would remind one of ancient Egyptian papyrus discovered in a tomb that has not seen humidity since the Bronze Age. Chewing it felt less like enjoying what should be a delicacy and more like grinding a handful of calcified aquarium gravel left under a commercial heat lamp into your mouth.

Before taking the first bite, I picked up the decorative lime wedge on the side and squeezed it with maximum kung-fu grip strength, only for absolutely zero drops of juice to escape… hence decorative.

That dead lime turned out to be a blessing and a curse. It was a curse because nobody wants to pay for barren fruit, but it was a massive blessing because the kitchen had already inexplicably assaulted this poor vegetable with a chemical weapon level of lime flavor. The blinding citrus attack completely annihilated the chili powder and cotija cheese, reducing the crema to a mere binding agent for pure acid. It was so thoroughly parched that my saliva glands immediately went on strike, leaving my mouth feeling like a dusty attic in July.

I heavily respect the money I spend on food, and I will almost always clean my plate unless the execution is completely criminal, but I threw away two thirds of this dry, lime tortured disaster because it was genuinely unfinishable.

Though I do not like giving low ones, the elote receives a score of 1.0 out of 5.

Fortunately, the entire lunch hour was rescued from the brink of total catastrophe by the arrival of the Piter Fries, an amalgamation of fries, steak, chicken and chorizo covered with queso and jalapeños. I ordered mine sans jalapeños, the spice is fine but not big on the flavor of the pepper.

I have no idea how it caught this random moniker but would be interested to hear the story.

The online menu originally threatened a $17 price tag, but the physical menu corrected that down to $15. The kitchen delivered a beautiful batch of exceptionally crunchy, beautifully cooked fries loaded down with high quality steak, tender chicken, and rich, molten queso. They were undeniably stingy with the spicy sausage.

My stripper name was Spicy Sausage.

More of that sausage would have sent this dish into orbit, but the overall execution was still fantastic. It was easily enough food to serve as a standalone meal for one person.

To put it in regional perspective, the legendary choricheese fries over at Carmelitas in Laurie will cost you around thirteen dollars without the premium steak and chicken, and they pile on a literal mountain of potatoes, sausage, and cheese. While this portion was less massive than a standard portion size one has grown to expect at a Mexican joint and what most usually provide, the flavor was genuinely outstanding and well worth the investment.

The Piter Fries secure a score of 4.3 out of 5.

The final damage came out to a little less than $26 after the extortion.

The final overall score to a flat 2.6 out of 5.

This lunch experience was not great but I have certainly had worse and those Piter fries were superb.

However, if you are a seasoned street corn veteran who knows exactly what real elote is supposed to taste like, this dry catastrophe will leave you thoroughly disappointed. If you are a complete novice who has never tried the dish before, this lime flavored desert wasteland will likely terrify you into never ordering it again for the rest of your life. Do not let this single bad execution ruin your future relationship with authentic street food. If you find yourself placing an order with this establishment, stay far away from the overpriced corn cob and steer your ship directly toward the loaded fries.

Updates:
The Iberia Area Beekeepers Club is holding a meeting on May 18th in Iberia at 1830. It is completely free, we sit around and bullshit, and you might accidentally learn how to keep a box of stinging insects alive, so show up if you want to get into the game.

Books:
I am finally wrapping up Morning Wood from the Everybody Loves Large Chests series today. It did not completely drag me in, it did start to get more entertaining during the last third of the book though, but even with that, I will be hunting for a brand new universe to start tomorrow while I continue the long wait for book eight of Dungeon Crawler Carl. 7 more days!

If this zero filter breakdown saved your wallet and your dental enamel from a lime flavored tragedy, go ahead and hit that like button and follow the page so you never miss another reality check.

I am under no illusion that my food reviews are changing civilization. I run these apparel brands for a very specific reason, which is to fund boots on the ground charities like the Foundation Project and to support my family. Right now, Unstable Apiary has an absolute banger of a sale running to clear out the inventory before the official bee conference season kicks off this June. Head over there immediately, score some killer gear, and help us fund some actual good in the real world.