La Ultima Mexicatessen

First off, my understanding of some Spanish vocabulary was clarified. I had always understood that la ultima meant "the last" or "ultimate" in the final sense of the word. Apparently no, much as in English, la ultima has come to mean, in common parlance, "the best" or "ultimate" in the unsurpassed sense of the word. Bueno.

On to Okanogan County restaurant review, el segundo.

Street view

La Ultima Mexicatessen is your Tonasket lunch or dinner choice, as long as your need to eat occurs Monday through Friday, 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Because it is entirely run by one family, they decided that to stay sane they needed to have weekends off. Understandable, and I hope it works out for them.


Located at 11 - West 4th, across from Lee Frank Mercantile (Ace Hardware), and two doors down from Tonasket Pizza and the Food Co-op, it sports both an unpresupposing facade and interior. In fact, the space is fairly plain, but they were playing some pleasant acoustic Mexican folk music while we were there.

We were greeted by the chatty owner, Michael, who wisely left the field of ESL teaching a couple years ago in order to go into the restaurant biz. Actually, I don't know, I think you have to be pretty nuts to go into either line of work, but who am I to talk . . . .?

Michael, the loquacious owner.

The food was good. They serve simple, good, reasonably-priced Mexican fare featuring daily specials after 2:00 every day. Check out the menu board in the photo.

Super pork torta

I had a super pork torta: kind of like a Mexican sloppy Joe with salad in a bun.

Frank had a super beef rice bowl. He eats a lot, so they super-sized it for him.

We also brought home six pork tamales. The family makes tamales and sells them at the Okanogan River Garlic Festival each year. Michael said they have a food cart of some sort that they haul to events like that. He's thinking about selling tamales at the Winthrop Sunday Market this summer; what do you think?

My sweetie with lunch.

Post script: Do you know/use the word, "unpresupposing"? It's not in any dictionary that I can find, yet I, and many other people, use the word.  Weird.