The menus at El Camino Cantina arrive at the table glued to vinyl records, with a side order of Bryan Adams delivered, complimentary, over the loudspeakers.

“Ooh, yeah, back in the summer of ’69,” drones the vocal.

The chipper young waiter — “It’s my first week, actually, I didn’t work here when it was Ananas” — drops off, unprompted, a bowl of corn chips with two salsas — one a tepid guacamole, the other something ill-defined and brown, possibly redolent of chipotle, but also possibly not — and leaves.

“We didn’t order these,” we tell him, gently, when he returns.

“It’s okay, everybody gets some — it’s free!” he explains chirpily. (We later observe him scooping corn chips from a corn chip station located, improbably, in the boot of a faux-Chevrolet that sticks out a wall on one side of the restaurant.) Bryan Adams subsides, his void filled by the strains of Eric Clapton: “Layla, you’ve got me on my knees”.

“Oh dear,” says my companion, nibbling desolately on a corn chip, while rather desperately surveying the cocktails menu (listed on the B-side of the record sleeve, obviously). “This is a restaurant not sure of its era.”

This is, in fact, the restaurant that has moved into the space vacated by the erstwhile Ananas, a glamorous, up-market French establishment that for some reason never really hit its straps. Ananas has relocated to the Cafe Nice site at Circular Quay, with Cafe Nice having been tossed out of the family, and both it and El Camino is part of the Urban Purveyor Group (whose restaurants include Sake in Double Bay and The Rocks).

UPG was last year bought out by private equity group Quadrant, helmed by American Thomas Pash, who is turning UPG into a shark in the Australian restaurant sea, swallowing big and little fish alike in a venue expansion plan that could see it owning up to 200 restaurants.

El Camino Cantina is one of the first to launch under the sombrero of the new group, and it seems clear some old high-end UPG aspirations have been jettisoned. El Camino, as noted on its own website, which incidentally, bears images of busty babes in skimpy stars-and-stripes outfits, stands for “Big Food. Bigger Margaritas. Legendary Tex-Mex.”

Ah yes, the margaritas. Bigger is the word, coming as they do in remarkable oversized receptacles so weighty we almost cannot pick them off the table. Order either the classic or the frozen version ($15 for 15oz or $19 for 24oz, and God forbid you do actually order one of that size), for they’re the best thing about El Camino. Which is to say, they’re not bad. Not great, either, seeing as they’re missing some of that sharp tang and salt hit you get from a spot on margarita. But at least they’re alcoholic — which means they may help you drown out the strains of Nirvana’s Come As You Are, at least if you are very lucky.

And so to the Tex-Mex food and to describe it as “legendary” might be overstating things somewhat.

Does legendary mean the utterly forgettable jalapeño “poppers” ($14), peppers stuffed with cream cheese, then breaded and deep fried? Er, no.

Or the equally forgettable pork quesadilla ($17), a pale imitation of a quesadilla with, well, cheese between two tortillas and some, yes, I think that’s pineapple chunks on top?

But nothing can mask the terribleness of the lobster taco ($12), a contender for worst thing I’ve eaten this year, with a pallid, soggy little tortilla draped with chunks of the unfortunate crustacean destroyed by extremely hot chilli. Take a bite and dive for your margarita. Lobster? It could be crab stick for all you’d know. Rarely have I seen a delicate resource treated with less respect.

Is there more? Oh, sure, fajitas and enchiladas, burritos and ensaladas, Purple Rain and Here Comes The Sun and anything else you might have found in some 1980s version of an “authentic Mexican”. It’s a pastiche of all the bad Mexican concepts we thought we’d left behind. Like the music, it belongs firmly in the past. Is it packed to the max? Of course it is.

Originally published on dailytelegraph.com.au