Casa Mexico Kanata — Restaurant in Ottawa

This is complicated. Summary: Food is good. Atmosphere is blah. Staff is friendly. Prices are unreasonably high.

We went in and immediately felt like we were in a diner or school cafeteria. It was too open, loud but not festive, boring, and way too hot inside. Yes the tables are decorated but the rest of the place felt so blah. It does not have the party vibe that the Merivale location has. Hopefully they can improve the experience after being open for awhile. ESPECIALLY the air conditioning.

Although we walked out without ordering because it was unreasonably hot inside, we have eaten at the Merivale location a few times and found the food to be quite good and authentic. HOWEVER the prices are sky high. Vegetarian enchiladas for $25! Veggie taco is not worth the $6 (each!), it's literally just random cooked veggies - no cheese or anything on it.

I don't know if they have alcohol yet, but if so expect to spend at least $40 per person for a main dish and a margarita - more if you get an...

The staff were lovely, honestly. I was pleasantly surprised at the great taco Tuesday deal :)

I prefer when I don't have for water top ups or napkins, but we did have to ask (wierd considering the spicy finger food elements)

Unfortunately the food was not as good as my first experience at the Merivale location. Our nachos (with guacamole) were stale.. (my husband doesn't like to complain about service, so I kept my mouth shut.) They just didn't taste fresh at all and the texture was stale. I heard the ladies in the table over make the same observation..

My tacos tasted OK, but ended up being very soggy due to how the shredded chicken taco was prepared. It seemed like they cooked the chicken in water, shredded it, amd then added sauce.... but didn't drain the water before adding sauce. That taco was dripping and left a puddle on my plate, making my other 3 tacos soggy :( Again, it all tasted good, but the preparation wasn't up to par, ...

I was so excited to visit this restaurant to finally have local cuisine from 'home'. While my enchiladas were pretty decent, and actually had a nice kick, all of the other dishes were extremely disappointing. Their Pico de Gallo is flavorless, which I didn't think was possible. Tasted no acid, cilantro garlic- anything that would have added SOMETHING. Just tomatoes and overly strong onions. Queso fundido was burnt and didnt come with enough tortillas. Kids had quesadillas which were meh. Generally what I'd expect from any 'Mexican' restaurant in Canada, which was disappointing as had hoped for more authentic taste, and they didn't even have a nice beer or margarita to wash it all down. Service also left a lot to be desired, we were asked to go pay before we had even been served our food. Pros: spicy was actually spicy, tortilla chips were great.

I think I'll just continue making my tamales and other fav...