What: The chicken chiles Agave
Where: Fresh Agave Mexican Bar and Grill, 73325 Highway 111, Palm Desert
How much: $12.50
Contact: 760-836-9028; www.freshagavemexicanbarandgrill.com
Why: The sauce ties it all together.
It wasn’t supposed to be my entrée.
I was having my monthly meeting with Independent contributor Kevin Fitzgerald, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted for lunch. I hadn’t been to Fresh Agave before, and I wanted to give the place a try, given how well it does in our Best of Coachella Valley readers’ poll every year. I intended to get a couple of items to try; because of my unfamiliarity with the menu, I asked the server for advice.
She recommended the chicken chiles Agave as a starter, along with a handful of entrées. The appetizer recommendation—yellow peppers stuffed with chicken, tomatoes, cilantro and onions, with chipotle sauce on the side—sounded good to me, so we ordered it and asked for more time to decide on our entrées.
The chicken chiles Agave arrived fairly quickly … and it was a good thing I hadn’t yet ordered my main course, as it was immediately obvious that I would not need one, given the size of what was on the plate—six not-small peppers stuffed with tasty goodness.
Kevin only wanted one of the six peppers, and the remaining five were enough of a meal, even for a hearty eater like me. And what a delicious meal it was; it was a perfect example of how ingredients when combined can become more than the sum of their parts: The stuffed peppers by themselves were just OK, and the chipotle sauce on its own was unspectacular. But when the two were combined … yum. The creamy, peppery and just slightly sweet sauce brought out all sorts of fantastic favors in the moist chicken.
I’ll definitely order the chicken chiles Agave on my next visit to Fresh Agave … but I’ll need to take more dining companions with me, so we can share it—meaning I’ll have enough room for an entrée.