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A couple of weekends ago, we were down in the Columbus, OH area visiting my inlaws. It was an exciting weekend of some close basketball games and even a trip to the hospital.

We got into town a little after noon on Friday. Hive account@mrsbozz and I did some running around while we were waiting for our neices to get out of school. That evening as I said we had a basketball game to go to then we needed to decide where to eat.

I have mentioned before that the Columbus area is a pretty big food gold mine. There are almost and infinite number of places to eat at. It never fails though that when we are in town and craving Mexican food, we usually find ourselves at Chilie Verde.

Chilie Verde only has one or two locations that I know of, but my sister in law says they are always packed. I personally can't remember a time we have gone that we didn't have to wait for a table.

This time we had six of us so the wait was even longer(close to 20 minutes). It was so busy that I wasn't able to get good shots of the interior.

The picture above is of the waiting area looking back towards the kitchen. To the left is the cashier and through another doorway is a seating area. In the back of that other seating section is a small bar area.

We were seated to the right of this picture, just around that partial wall. They put us in a booth and pulled a two top table to the end of the booth so we could have seating for six. My brother in law and I got the small table and we felt like we were out in no mans land while eating.

It was definitely a tight squeeze for the waitress to get around us and serve the two booths that were beyond ours.

We started with some pitchers of margaritas and this rather large bowl of queso. My oldest niece wanted to hold the chip to make the photo more staged and appealing.

Unlike most Mexican restaurants the queso is yellow and not white. I have a theory on that which I will get to in a second. Either way, it was fantastic with large chuncks of peppers and other veggies in it.

They have a pretty exstensive selection of Tequilas that you can have your drinks made with. Being rather frugal, we just went with the house brand. They were still tasty and we ended up sharing two pitchers between the four of us.

I got some pictures of the menu, but quite honestly you should check out their website I linked to above if you want to read through it better.

We all ordered our food and waited for it to show up. It actually took a little longer to get our food than a usual Mexican restaurant, but they were busy, so I am not that surprised.

Hive account@mrsbozz and I both got the fajita burrito. She got hers with chicken and I got mine with steak. We had our choice of sauce to have them smother it with, hot chilie verde, medium chilie rojo, or mild ranchero. If those didn't appeal to you, you could choose one of their specialty sauces for an additional charge. Ancho chile demi-glace, queso salsa, and anasazi, we ultimiately both chose the queso.

Our brother in law got the taco trio with I think chorizzo, but I honestly don't remember now which protein he picked.

Finally, my sister in law and my neices shared the chicken fajitas.

Chilie Verde always has some really solid food and as I mentioned above they are pretty much always busy.

There has always been something that bugged me about their food though. It's not that it isn't good, but it is always much different from what I expect whenever I order.

After this last trip, I think I finally put my finger on what that is and it was verified as I was walking out by a conversation I overheard between another patron and his wife.

I think to call Chilie Verde a Mexican Resaturant is a misnomer. In fact if you look at their website they don't bill themselves as a Mexican restaurant, they call themselves a "New Mexican" restaurant.

That's right, the food is actually more South Western as opposed to the tradiational Mexican we are used to in the states. The flavors are deeper and heavier. There is more spice with an abundance of adobo and anchos. In fact this is one of the few "Mexican" restaurants I have been to that offers a truly "hot" salsa with their chips(upon request).

Back to the queso, I think that South Western distinction is part of the reason for the queso being the way it is.

All that being said, Chilie Verde definitely isn't a place to be overlooked. Just know that if you see something on the menu that reminds you of your usual dish you get at the local "Mexican" joint, it is probably going to be quite different that you are expecting.

In the end we each paid for one of the pitchers and then our respective food. I think my in laws picked up the bowl of queso.

$47.84 before tip isn't that bad of a deal for the obviously hand crafted food that we recieved. The flavors were on point and it was definitely filling. I have no doubt we will continue to find our way back to Chilie Verde Cafe through the years as we visit our family.

You should too!