I can thank Qdoba for at least one thing.
If it weren't for their restaurant on Walnut Street in Philadelphia, my son's college diet would consist of beer and tortilla chips. Thanks to them it is tacos, queso, beer and tortilla chips. He might even add a little lettuce to the tacos, so that's one vegetable serving a day. Like I say, for that I am grateful.
He's back for a while this summer so we visited the Qdoba restaurant in the Tower Building downtown. I like Qdoba it for the most part. The best menu item is the queso, it's as good as you can get in a fast food restaurant.
I was pretty excited the first time I visited the Qdoba-concept restaurant a few years ago. Now, and dozens of visits later, I have one main complaint and one minor complaint.
The biggest problem I have is with the food temperature, especially their signature burrito. Hot food should be served hot and cold food should be served cold. Simple. Qdoba's food, by the time I sit down, is luke-warm, and that keeps me from giving them high marks.
The taste is good, the service is good, but the food-warming basins are not kept hot enough, probably for insurance purposes, the rice is often cool, and then, by the time your food sits in the prep line and you wait to check out, the burrito's way too cooled off for me.
The other thing, and this is a minor point, but it seems expensive for what you get.
Now, I am happy to go to any restaurant of my children's choosing because a good meal is more than the food. We all know that. But if I could get that burrito served piping hot I'd go back, on my own, a lot more often.
