Iguana’s in Clark, Pampanga

There’s been a quite a boom in Mexican restos all over Metro Manila, whereas a few years ago you might find the choice wanting. During a trip to Fontana with The Club, we decided to have a lunch adventure at Iguana’s, formerly Zapata’s, which I’ve heard good things. We arrived in separate cars, since we were quite a big group, we initially got a big table that’s when thing started going wrong. I’ll focus more on the food and talk about the problems later.

The decor and ambiance is cliched Mexican with a big bar in the middle. Chili, iguanas and even photos of Zapata, a Mexican hero, adorn the wall sharing space with a life sized fake cactus.

We browsed off their newspaper like menu, still sporting the Zapata’s name, and settled on a few dishes to share. Tortilla Soup (P90) was the first to arrive, we ordered this thinking it was similar to the one we had at Chihuahua. The soup was good and was one of the bright spots in the meal, it was hot and hearty, perfect for that rainy day.

I also got a plate of Irish Nachos (P120), a weird dish popping up on the otherwise Mexican menu. The nachos were actually devoid of chips, potato wedges took their place. The potatoes are smothered in cheese and chili. This was a great order for us, sharing it with Fran and Paul, who also liked it.

Irene and I decided to share a Combination Plate (P240/ selection of 3). You can choose from among tacos, enchiladas, buritos and chili con carne. Each plate came with a Mayan Bean soup, refried or Borracho beans and steamed or fried Mexican rice.

The soup looked and tasted quite thick, as if they just put the beans in the blender and pureed them. I had a spoon and then left it. I missed it being mentioned on the menu hence the order of the Tortilla soup earlier.

Our choices was a chicken taco, cheese and bean burrito and chicken enchilada. No beef whatsoever since Irene was sharing it with me. There was really a lot on the plate, so much so that the taco was served on another. This would really fill anyone up and is quite cheap for the amount of food. There might be alot of food but everything was so so for me. The cheese and bean burrito was a bad choice, the filling seemingly mimicking the consistency of the bean soup with sparse amount of cheese. The taco was ok but I’d rather have the soft tacos here.

Remember the problem I mentioned earlier, its the reason why I will never go back to Zapata’s. The place discriminates against large groups of people. This is the sign on every table there, even the manager came out and told us pointblank that this was their policy.

We initially wanted to sit together in a large connected table but was informed of this rule. So we told we’ll sit in two groups instead, but they said since we came in together, we would already be charged irregardless of whether we sat together or not. We finally convinced them that our group and the other group just met in the inside the restaurant and was able to circumvent this rule.

This is one of most preposterous rules I have ever come across, I have no problems with paying the 10%
service charge if groups big or small would be levied this. I don’t know the reason why they do this for big groups only, if I were running a restaurant, I would probably want to have bigger groups since they’ll be ordering more hence larger sales.

The place had a nice kitschy Mexican feel to it, food was cheap, even if not the best Mexican food I’ve had, too bad I won’t be going back,

Iguana’s Authentic Mexican Food
(formerly Zapata’s)
480 Don Juico Avenue Clark View, Angeles City
Pampanga
045.892.0859 ‎

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