Riviera Maya (that's the correct spelling, Trip Advisor somehow has the name entered into its database with an incorrect spelling) has proven the food snobs wrong. They acted as if it were beneath their dignity to visit yet another Tex-Mex restaurant serving the same old, same old Tex-Mex food we can get at any number of chains in the city. They wrote articles asking if the city really needs another Tex-Mex place (curiously enough, they never ask the same question about the astonishing number of "burger" and grilled-meat sports bars in Little Rock that just continue to open one on the heels of another to satisfy our local old boys' appetite for flesh). When this restaurant first opened, food critics in local newspapers were very snooty about it. It's solid, reliable, good at what it does. But because so many of us have long known and loved Tex-Mex food as "real" Mexican food - and that's understable, given that one of the states bordering us on the west is Texas, the city also has a plethora of Tex-Mex restaurants, and Riviera Maya is one of the good ones. Due to the influx of new citizens from Mexico and Central America, Little Rock now has a wealth of very good authentic Mexican (and some Central American) restaurants. Along with a bunch of locals of my generation, I remember when the iconic Tex-Mex restaurant Brownings in the Heights WAS Mexican food in Little Rock, and when those of us who frequented the place and raved over its cheese sauce (an Arkansas fixation no matter where it's served) and strange dry, tubular enchiladas doused in a canned "Mexican" brown sauce thought we were eating the very best of Mexican food.
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