yeah, those little local places are often the best sit-down places. at the very least they're the closest you can get to authentic. it's hard (for me anyway) to find completely authentic mexican food outside of texas or new mexico (haven't been to socal yet, just norcal), just because the ingredients in the other states will be to American standards and not mexican standards (fda/usda regulations and stuff). as mentioned in gobert's mexicoke thread, there are major differences even in the manufacture of processed food ingredients and beverages between US/canada and the rest of the hemisphere. so even the family-owned joints here in the midwest aren't extremely authentic. of course, there is the advantage of knowing that all the ingredients in what you're about to ingest are safe and that the food was (hopefully) prepared according to health regulations that make it safe to eat. I was fortunate to be in and eat in parts of mexico where most stuff was made to essentially the same health-code standards as here, but there are some parts (particularly further south) where you can't be sure of that. tapeworms are no joke, and they're far from the worst things lurking in the food in some parts of the world.
