seansbrew said:
c-ba55 wrote
Hey c-ba55, are there any Mexican restuarants that you can recomend in San Diego?
It's the taco stands where the great stuff is. Roberto's is the classic, and it's pretty good. Roberto invented the format. There are now lots of Roberto's and many many many more *berto's. That is, imitators have opened shops named Alberto's Adalberto's, Anaberto's, Humberto's, ......on and on. Cotija's (also involving various phonetically equivalent imitators) is alright. They have a deep menu, and their pollo asado is tops.
My #1 all time favorite is this place right over the bridge from Pacific Beach into Ocean Beach. The sign just says "Mexican Food. 24 Hours." The official name of the place is Taco Riendo (Laughing Taco). That is heaven, and I will be there in about 30 hours. They make the greatest carnitas ever. Kind of depends on who's working the grill though.
La Posta in Hillcrest is very popular, but that is mostly scenester hype.
For a more pleasant formal experience, all the restaurants in Old Town are good. But if you're in the mood for a good pound of meat in a tortilla, these taco shops are the place to go. Word to the rest of the country on what goes into a burrito.
One pound of meat, juicy and flavorful
some onions, cilantro, and guacamole
hot sauce.
jumbo flour tortilla
THAT'S IT.
For tacos, modify to 1/2 pound meat and corn tortilla. Fold less.
Beans, rice? Never heard of them. Sour cream, cheese? No and no. Breakfast burritos get an exemption.
For fish/shrimp tacos, Rubio's (a chain, but the original) is actually hard to beat. A lot of other places fish tacos are just not fried right, and end up tasting fairly odd.
Some other restaurants are in between on skeeviness and make good seafood. By which I mostly mean soups and "cocktails." Mostly raw chewy seafood "cooked" in vinegar, and kind of sweet and chewy. Vinegar breaks down the proteins similar to heat. Octopus, oyster, squid, that sort of stuff. One I always used to go to for that was on Garnet and like Kendall in PB, but I can't remember the name.
Maybe you noticed I think all the best restaurants are in one area of town, where I used to live. This is because the entire city is blanketed with Mexican food of unbelievable quality, not because where I lived was particularly abundant.
And everywhere else I've been, (and I've been around) the Mexican food is terrible. You go to a Mexican restaurant, there are Mexicans working there, speaking Spanish like they just arrived, and the food sucks. I've never been to Texas. The food is probably good there. New Mexico was not too bad. Everything else was bad, bad, bad. And even travelling around Mexico, I didn't care that much for the regional cuisines outside Baja.
Maybe it's just me.
