I love dancing. I love watching it. I love doing it. I get excited when they announce the dance concerts and look forward to taking Jade for an evening of creative artistry. Jade likes dancing too. He even wants to take a dance class, but does not, in his words, want to be in a class “with a bunch of girls.” C’est la vie.

To prepare for our night out, we were watching dance videos on YouTube. It started with me trying to find a video of dancers shaking their hips really fast like Tahitian or Samba dancers, but somehow (as will happen on YouTube) we ended up watching Samoan fire dancers. Then we moved on to other fire dancers and then to fire eaters and pretty soon the better part of an hour was gone and we still needed to eat dinner before the performance.

We decided to grab a bite at El Charolais. At least that’s what the sign said. I thought it was called El Torito. We’ve always called it “The Mexican Place Next to Kroger.”

Whatever the name is, I love Mexican food and this place does not disappoint.

I started with some horchata. I’ve loved horchata since the first time I had it. It’s like Thai Iced Tea and Eggnog. You can’t get it just anywhere and that’s what makes it special.

My advice for food is to order off the “Muy Mexicano” menu. The tacos are served with onion, cilantro and lime on a corn tortilla. I got the fish tacos and ordered Jade two tacos de asada. Jeff got the carnitas torta, which is a sandwich. He also likes the lengua torta, but I’m not ready to go there (if you don’t know what lengua is I’d suggest looking it up before ordering).

While we noshed on chips and salsa Jade told Jeff all about the fire dancing videos and the girl who ate fire. Jeff claims to only watch instructional videos on YouTube, which I don’t believe for one second.

Speaking of eating fire, if you like spicy salsa, ask for the hot sauce in the ketchup bottle. It’s good – the one they serve with the chips is good too, but pretty mild.

The music playing in the dining room is fast and festive and makes you want to dance. Jade was seat-dancing and squirming all over the booth. I figured it was because of the music and talk of dance. Of course, it could have been caused by the sweet tea. Who’s to say?

The entire meal was pretty messy, which is part of the fun. Jeff had half his sandwich left and I had a fish taco to take home. On your way out they have candy jars with three chocolate mints for $.25. It makes me happy that I can still buy something for a quarter. And not just one something, but three somethings.

After dinner we went our separate ways. Jade and I headed to the dance concert and sat in the second row. Jade wanted to sit that close so we could see the dancer’s eyeballs. Always a good thing. We agreed that “Thinking Outside the Bachs” and the Balloon Ballet were our favorites of the evening. The whole show was great. If you can entertain a grown woman and a 6-year-old child I’d say you hit the mark.

Disaster struck when we got home and I enquired about my fish taco. Somehow, through distraction while Jeff was paying and I was in the bathroom we managed to leave without taking our leftovers. We sulked over that one for days. Like a nuclear reactor disaster we kept replaying the events, looking for ways to avoid ever having such a catastrophe occur again. But don’t hold that against the restaurant, it wasn’t their fault.

The dance concert was over on Sunday so you’ll have to catch one next year, but El Charolais is here now. Eat up!

El Charolais Mexican Grill Taqueria is located at 1805 W. State of Franklin. For more information, call 423-928-0929.

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