Santa Fé Restaurant — Restaurant in Helsinki sub-region

My recent visit to Santa Fé in Helsinki left me with mixed feelings. On the positive side, the service was fantastic — the staff were friendly, attentive and handled the situation well when a plate had a problem. The atmosphere is lively with a good location, which makes it potentially a solid option for a casual Tex-Mex evening.

However, there were several disappointments with the food quality and value:

I ordered the Super Nacho Supreme with beef, and the beef arrived cold — though it was reheated, the impact was already felt.

The nachos themselves were underwhelming: the flavour was bland and the ingredients felt low-quality.

The soda I had came with barely any fizz, which is a minor thing but tells you about the attention to detail.

And all this for a relatively high price, which overall made the meal feel less satisfying than I expected.

My companions tried other dishes (fajitas or burritos) — which I believe could be better choices — but they weren’t very pleased either.

In terms of improvements, I believe Santa Fé would benefit from:

Updating some menu items to deliver better flavour and ingredient quality (for example, more freshly made salsa instead of generic dips).

Including guacamole and crème fraîche as standard components in more dishes — rather than optional extras.

Ensuring consistently good temperature and presentation of all dishes.

In short: great service + good location = +1. But the food and value didn’t quite hit the mark for me this time. If I were to return (unlikelyat this point), I’d choose a burrito or fajitas (and make sure I specify what I prefer) instead...

We dined here June 2025. Having lived in New Mexico, we kind of had to go in. We were seated promptly. The restaurant is clean and well decorated.

I was a bit disappointed that a regular margarita on the rocks was not on the drinks menu. I opted for a Finnish cider and my partner had a Finnish beer. Both drinks were tasty and refreshing.

The menu was a bit of a challenge for us. Many items have "cheddar sauce," which to me does not count as food. There was no red or green chili on the menu, which would have been nearly miraculous. I did not have my hopes up, so it was ok. We started with chips and salsa which were fine, although the chips were not warmed.

We ended up sharing chicken fajitas, which seemed like the safest choice. It was served on a sizzling cast iron platter and was quite tasty. The chicken was a grilled chicken breast served atop the vegetables. Usually, the meat is cooked in with the vegetables, but having it on top was fine, merely an unexpected presentation.

Only three stars on the food because of the prevalence of cheddar sauce in the dishes and my personal dislike of...

I wonder how these people dare selling so poor quality food at this expensive prices. I had a Nachos Supreme: low quality Nachos with some tasteless chopped tomatoes all covered by an orange sauce pretending to be melted cheese. As hot peppers they used the green middle-eastern slices you can buy from any Finnish supermarket. All ingredients looked like the cheapest texmex (and not even that) products from a supermarket, it costed 15 euro, and the amount was almost right. My girlfriend had Chicken Fajitas, with the cheapest guacamole I've ever tasted and very basic sauces (one looked like smetana, that you can buy for very cheap in ethnic shops in Helsinki). The chicken was decent, buy the tortillas were low quality, not soft enough, those that tend to break when folded, again like those you can buy for cheap in supermarkets. This costed 19.50 euro. The quality was lower than Taco Bell, the amount a little bit larger, buy the price was...