On the border

When my friends and I stopped in last week, there was a man on a ladder fixing something on the ceiling, the lights were on the fritz, and the waitress was a bit unclear about the menu.

But that's to be expected of a neighborhood joint, an unpretentious haunt for ethnic food, which is what the roomy and bright-colored Cancun aims to be.

My guests and I started out impressed by our options. Even though dishes are sold for Taco Bell prices (you can get a burrito for under $5), the variety of the lineup goes well beyond fast food. There's tortilla salad, home-style tamales, and hearty dishes of meat and shrimp.

We started with starters. While we were a bit unsatisfied by the tamales de pollo, we loved the corn version of the dish ($1.50), which was small, soft, and tasted like crumbling corn bread.

We also enjoyed the tasty pupusas ($1.75). The meat-stuffed pupusa was a delicious pancake, but the cheese version was superior, tasting almost like a blintz with a ricotta-like filling.

We also tried the platanos con crema ($3), which was a generous pile of plantains served with light cream. We grazed on that plate throughout the meal.

Dinner was a mixed bag. One of my companions ordered the picada mixta ($16), which turned out to be an Atkins-friendly pile of beef and chicken. It was garnished with some type of fried pork and squares of a feta-like cheese. Yummy for carnivores, but a bit overwhelming.

My friend who ordered the enchiladas ($9) was let down. She ordered a meatless version of the dish, which came covered in an electric pink sauce. She had one bite and said the liquid tasted like tin foil . I sampled and agreed.

I ordered right, asking for the burrito supreme ($6). It was a big, fat wrap, perfectly huge and packed with chicken so shredded it was almost a liquid. There was plenty of sour cream (usually, to me, there's never enough) and veggies that seemed to be an afterthought. It wasn't the kind of healthy wrap that's heavy on black beans and lettuce. It was mostly the naughty stuff inside of a warm, crispy tortilla.

One of my guests opted for a twosome and tried the tortas mexicanas ($5) and the chiles rellenos de queso y carne asada ($10). The tortas were a good lunch portion of sandwiches, a fairly simple deli-inspired take on the meal of beef on bread.

He had mixed feelings about the chiles. The dish was greasy and tasted a bit like hamburgers. But it was flavorful, and served swimming in oils.

We moved on to sweets, and were told we only had one option, the flan ($3), even though there were four other desserts listed on the menu. But it turned out to be one of the highlights of the meal, a solid yet creamy custard with a perfect caramel flavor.

One of my companions, the kind of Latin food lover who has been known to smuggle mole sauce over the border, was unimpressed by Cancun. It wasn't gourmet and some of the standard dishes were subpar. It had the feel of, well, a neighborhood joint with fast food.

But, he admitted, that's what some people are looking for.

And ``some people" turns out to be me. Yes, we hope that Cancun fixes its enchiladas, but we're happy to be served our burritos too sauced in a relaxed joint where we can watch Telemundo on a big screen and play ``Runaround Sue" and ``La Bamba" on the jukebox.

Meredith Goldstein