El Poco Cantina — Restaurant in Manila

It was a good experience since Ben and Ben's concert was cancelled.

We were excited to try this cause we saw the vid on Social Media.

I've read raving comments as to the authentic taste.

In fact, we were more excited to eat here than attend the concert 😁

So we pre-ordered via the website since there's a prompt in the menu to do so to avoid the line. (Really helpful to pre-order)

Since it was a rainy day, there was no long queue (a good thing) & not many customers coming in.

And so we found ourselves seated at the reserved table (another advantage of preordering)

We were so looking forward and so when we pre-ordered we ordered a lot.

First of all, I havent been to Mexico so I cant really make judgement whether the food taste is authentic or what. I am just basing my review on how I tasted and experience the food.

Servings: Food is served in a generous amount. I feel like their prices are just right for the servings. Oh except for drinks (iced tea and Horchata) Food is best when eaten hot. Otherwise nakakaumay.

Drinks: Home Brewed Iced tea No question about the taste and its bottle. Nice datingan & lasa. I Just feel like bitin since need mo lumunok ng marami at greasy food hehe. Like, I prefer it sa baso for the reason na I want more Iced Tea since masarap siya (P130)

Taste: Their Quesadilla is bland. That's why you'd really appreciate the dips that come with it. We ordered Garlic & Bacon Bits.

**Correct me if I'm wrong, the dips for quesadilla & tacos are all the same.

I love it's huge size though

Birria Tacos: Delicious! You'll taste the real beef, sweetness of shallots though I thought the beef was too salty for me. I tried it with different dips. I enjoyed it with mayo. Loved that the order comes with lemon. Pero bitin. I wish naka hingi ako ng lemon kasi bitin ung amount ng lemon. Mas masarap kung marami rami ung ma squeeze na lemon.

Consome: I was hoping to get a taste of the bone & beef in it pero it was none of what I expected.

I dipped my quesobirria and birria and soft tacos to get a feel which one would be good with it but well.

Quesobirria: It's good on my first bite! Your palate will enjoy the taste of beef, herbs and oher ingredients! When I tried it on consome, it didnt compliment as to the taste. So I tried them with different dips. For me it was best with mayo.

Dips: The mayo was the winner for me. I was wondering whether the red thingy dip was tomato? It didnt taste like tomato if it was indeed tomato. I also like the green herb which I think was chillies.

Free lemon water: I noticed they have a standby cold lemon water. But I didnt try it. I jst had to mention.

Staff: Theyre friendly & nice. The server was a happy one so it was a good thing

CR: Let's not focus on this. Quite not their priority. Pero sana pagandahin nila kasi it matters. Di naman bongga but you know make it more presentable and clean

Aesthetic: Infairness kahit small ung place, ok sia. Instagrammable naman ung eating area.

Parking: Nope. They don't have one. Mabuti n lang weekend I was able to park sa nearby bank parking space. So bad idea na magdala ng kotse on a weekday.

We tried also the KenKen Chicken. We ordered the wings with sriracha & honey flavor.

Masarap. Ung lutong nya ung swabe. Crunchy na di nakakainit ng ulo sa tigas. I actually dipped it sa consome kasi ang anghang 😂

In general, gusto ko i try uli to see if it was just a rainy day and compare the taste.

The over-all taste was okay not something na mapapa-wow ka. Pero feeling ko, they can improve pa the taste. Lalo na theyre a...

giving 4 stars bc out of prolly the 10 times we came here, yesterday was the only instance where the quality and service was...questionable

we have always loved el poco, its one of our comfort spots. its our go-to when we have enough money as students. my favorite has always been the tostadas bc the texture is just 🥰🥰🥰 love the onions and cilantros always (YES I DONT PICK IT OUT PAPAKIN KO PA YAN E) and the meat is always highlighted although the salsa never fail to complement the flavor. i can also siguro chug 1 liter of their horchata in one go. everything was super good! i was satisfied with the servings and the price. i think its a bit cheap na nga considering the quality.

but this one time talaga it was very annoying. we came at around dinner time friday evening where they had the 99 pesos taco promo. my partner ordered birria tacos in the tostada pork carnitas variant and the nachos for takeaway. pagdating namin sa bahay, we noticed walang consome and the meat is A LOT PALER in color compared to our past orders that were pork carnitas din. it was also not pulled? they were in cubes and just had a brown sauce covering the pale color so i was like did we get the wrong order?

turns out the counter didnt hear it correctly and just punched regular tostadas. i admit we were wrong to not double check the item in the receipt. nakita na lang namin nung nakauwi na. my partner had to converse with them 2 times and i came around the 3rd time to let them know the order was inputted wrong in the counter. they finally relented and just gave the consome but they still insisted that the pork is supposed to look like that, pale and in cubes, and we were like okay 👍 i appreciate the service worker in reminding us to always double check the receipt and the screen

but in all the times we've ordered pork carnitas IT HAS NEVER BEEN THAT PALE. i think what happened was naubusan na sila ng meat bc so many people was buying from the promo and they had to cook a new batch that didnt have enough time to marinate bc people were still actively ordering. it was a hectic time in the kitchen. ending the meat didnt taste like anything at all and we just tasted the onions and salsa instead. or maybe they really changed how it was cooked and ganun na talaga dapat itsura? if thats how it will be from now onwards we'll just...

My husband and I have been wanting to try the Birria Tacos from El Poco Cantina so we braved the Manila commute and went.

Ambiance/Environment is quite straight forward. Seats are available during non-peak hours. Though they aren't the most comfortable seats, it is understandable for start up businesses. But upgrades definitely won't do any harm. Although in my opinion, it is a good strategy to keep it that way to avoid customers from staying behind after their meals to accommodate other customers waiting for vacant seats.

As for the food, we have yet to taste the authentic Birria Tacos but the experience with them would be 5/5. I love how soft the beef was (for both tacos and Barbacoa Quesadilla) because I have issues with meat getting stuck between gaps of my teeth, I never experienced it here. The consomme was definitely served hot.

The Taco shells had that perfect crunch too!

I also loved their Horchata although it was too sweet for me, it was perfect especially when I accidentally had a bite with hot sauce. (My tolerance for hot food still isn't the best)

I am giving this a 4 star not because they don't derserve a good rating but as a challence to improve on their customer service skills. I know how hard it is to be working in the food industry as it can be really tiring. But I hope they can be professional enough with recalling if there are missing orders on the table.

When we were initially served with the Tacos, we immediately reminded that we also had an order of a Quesadilla. Then after almost finishing our tacos, we had to call the attention of one of the servers to follow up on the missing order. We heared them argue and had to ask for us to confirm with our receipt. As it turns out, our quesadilla has been sitting on their side (inside the other closed section near the cashier) and no one bothered to confirm if someone owns it or not, we had to follow up for it.

All in all, the experience was okay. It was a tiring commute but it was...