La Mexicana — Local services in Painesville

As a native to Painesville, this place has long been one of my favorite places in town. The food is without a doubt the best in town, its authentic Mexican food that is always fresh and cooked perfectly, always high quality and will make you realize just how bad the usual fast food and southwestern style mexican restaurants really are. I also love shopping here - again a breath of fresh air compared to the usual run of the mill garbage we normally buy, as its mostly all imported mexican groceries, which imo are generally better quality then American food (which if you didn't realize is horrible quality processed garbage). I love getting snacks and sweets from here, nothing else quite like their unique selection anywhere in Lake County. If your from out of town this is a place you must check out while your here. If your from here and have never been here you are seriously missing out on one of the gems...

The reason why this review gets three stars is because of the grocery store - it's amazing! You can find everything you need to make you feel like you are in Mexico. What's bringing the review down is the food served up front. There's all this talk about it being the most authentic Mexican food in the area, but unfortunately it's not. First of all, real burritos don't have rice in them (think Chipotle) just like they serve here. Also, the tortillas used here for the tacos are not authentic tortillas. The ones used here (and many other "Mexican" restaurants in the area) use preservatives to keep the tortillas fresh and you can taste that. I feel I can speak to this after living in Mexico for almost 5 years and still having family there. If you are looking for legit Mexican tacos, tortas, and quesadillas, look about a mile north from here at La Casita and you will find what you're looking...

The place itself it's too crowed and it's difficult to even walk around while trying to grab an item from the shelves. The same experience goes for the bakery, it's simply overwhelming while you are trying to grab your bread to have 5/8 more people to do the same in an extremely tiny confined space, it's just not for me, it's SO inconvenient. They don't have parking spaces available, you basically have to park on the road where there is not many spaces to legally park. The only good experience at this place was the very friendly customer service oriented guy at the meat/deli department, he was very helpful and courteous. The guy at the register wasn't the friendliest cookie of the tray. Long story short, this place would be great if the layout of the store would be different and with parking spaces available, last but not least, they could use a more friendly customer...