PROVO — For me, the word at Pastorero means "almost."

The Provo incarnation of this small Mexican chain almost made the list, which I keep in my head, of "restaurants at which I would spend my own money, not just the newspaper's."

The portions are almost big enough to justify the prices. And the friendly, anxious service is almost good enough to keep me coming back.

Pastorero has been open a year now in this strip mall just a hop, skip and jump from Lavell Edwards Stadium. The menu is a nicely judged offering of "pastor" style dishes, Mexico City street food in which meat, cheese, fruit and veggie combinations are presented steamy hot with tortillas on the side.

The problems started when we ordered. I would like to blame it all on a language barrier, a challenge I've encountered at many restaurants but which usually is overcome easily with patience and effort on both sides.

At Pastorero, though, the man who took our orders seemed not only to have trouble understanding us, but dismissed our attempts to make ourselves understood by peremptorily contradicting the menu.

First, I asked for a kids' quesadilla with ham. This item comes with cheese only, but the menu says you can add "any meat" for an extra charge. We asked for ham because our daughter likes it, and it is a prominent item in several of the adult entrees. We were told they didn't have ham. I pointed out that it's in several other dishes, and the man at the counter said "no ham!" and then listed three meat options including the one we chose, seasoned roasted pork "pastor."

I don't have a problem with limiting choices on a kids' quesadilla to three meats. But the menu doesn't spell it out, the server had trouble articulating what's available and there was plenty of ham in the restaurant that night — I had lots of it on my own food. A few menu tweaks and a little more training would help.

That also would solve our next ordering problem. My husband asked for fajitas with chicken and steak, but he was told he had to choose one or the other. When he tried to point out, on the wall-size menu beside us, that the menu allows both chicken and steak on a single order, he was authoritatively told, "Just one!"

Those issues continued when our food arrived with one large tortilla each rather than the "stack of" tortillas promised on the menu, and minus any of the side orders of rice and beans we'd been led to expect by the menu. We tried several times to get this rectified, but only a fraction of the promised items showed up, albeit with plenty of apologies.