Mexican Love at El Cantinero

The other day Libby and I exercised our rule to test out a new restaurant per week. We’ve been really good about following our respective budgets, and we haven’t even been dining out every week like we originally set our limits at. But after some time at the farmer’s market, our tummies started rumbling and we decided to check out a new-to-us Mexican restaurant with some friends.

Welcome to El Cantinero near Union Square, my friends.

We got a table in their garden rooftop, which was nice and breezy on the warm summer day we were having. I love all of the decorations and I love that it was in a garden, as opposed to another plain ole’ rooftop. This one had some spunk and I liked it 🙂

I also liked the company I had with me.

Shh…Libby says she loves making appearances on my blog. I keep telling her to start one herself so we can show her some love too!

We also had some of Libby’s really good friends, Jane and Darly, join us.

We kicked off the meal by ordering a pitcher of sangria to share. I love sangria simply because I love eating the fruit after my glass is empty. Am I the only one?

Either way, we all thought the sangria was delicious. We each had two glasses and left fully content.

Our food was good too! It wasn’t the best Mexican food I’ve had in my entire life, but it satisfied my cravings and the price was just right.

I ordered a beef taco with rice and black beans. The meal originally came with refried beans, but I swapped those out. I tried to switch my cheesy rice out for brown rice, but for some reason they wouldn’t let me. That’s my only real complaint. But I gobbled up the rice anyway. Love me some rice.

The other girls also ordered tacos and enjoyed their meals just as much. The waiter was really accommodating for Libby’s diet restrictions (no dairy) and she got exactly what she wanted too. We’ll be back!

In other news, I got to spin with two of my favorite Biggest Loser girls again tonight, with one of my all-time-favorite instructors, Jenny!

After we got nice and sweaty © SoulCycle

The FITNESS staff took a little field trip to SoulCycle to spin with our September cover girls. We were able to bring along some readers too, and I finally got to meet Theodora, Margo and Jess in person! Unfortunately, I didn’t snag a photo. Bad blogger. Next time, I promise! But the class was still awesome. Jenny knows what beats to play and she won my heart when she played a Backstreet Boys throwback to tackle a hill. Holla at my boy bands!

Anyone else love boy bands? I still can’t get enough of the Backstreet Boys, and am not ashamed to admit I still listen to N*SYNC and NKOTB now and again.