Paseo — Restaurant in Anaheim

I rarely feel compelled enough to set aside time to write a negative review on a restaurant, unless the visit was that egregious. Unfortunately, our visit tonight to Paseo was actually that horrifically bad.

I'll just highlight the notable things: The esquites was easily the worst esquites we've ever had. After my first bite, I knew right away that this was just cheap canned corn. The kitchen staff didn't even bother to drain the canned corn they used, so the entire bottom of the esquite was just water. Absolutely unacceptable. Also, the flavor was just meh. Bland. The $64 ($64???? What is this? Mastro's??) carne asada was terrible. We asked for it to be cooked medium. And instead, what we got was an extremely thick tough to chew brick of meat where one half of it was cooked raw rare and the other half was cooked well done. Apparently, someone in the kitchen doesn't know how to cook steak. And the carne asada steak was extremely thick, tough, chewy, and difficult to slice with a steak knife. The halloween "special" drink was BAD. There was barely any alcohol in the drink. It was mostly just orange and pineapple juice, with the tiniest splash of alcohol, and a way too salty foam on top. For $18, are you joking? I could only force myself to drink barely half of it before I couldn't take it anymore. It was that undrinkable. The fish empanada with squid ink masa was just ok. Not terrible. But also not great. There wasn't any "pizzaz" in the flavors, just pretty bland. And this was also $18 for just one literal empanada. Yikes. An expeditor who dropped off our carne asada plate, walked up to us with the dish, asked who had the carne asada plate, and then proceeded to just stare at us. He basically waited for us to move dishes and cups out of the way for him so he could place the carne asada plate down. Wow. Really? And then what was even better was he set the plate down crooked and at an angle, so the wooden board (that the carne asada dish came served on) was at an awkward angle, with pieces of steak rolling off the board onto the table. And the expeditor just walks away. Unbelievable. We asked an expeditor if we could get some ketchup. They said "sure" and didn't come back till 10 minutes later, only to tell us that they ran out of ketchup. Our server then said, just wait a sec, i'll go find some. Then our server comes back with with what looked like the bottom of a ketchup bottle just splattered at the bottom of the cup. It was probably enough ketchup for a few french fries? What was kind of sad was the server then later brought us a full bowl of ketchup, claiming she had to go to another restaurant to get us ketchup, but we were already finished with our meal and ready to leave. I appreciated the effort, but why even bring it to us when we were clearly finished with our meal? Believe it or not, the ONLY thing that was actually kinda decent was the kids quesadilla.

I can't believe I just spent about 10-15 min writing this negative review. But I feel I owe it to anyone who might consider coming to this restaurant in the future, so that they can read an actual review. $180 for 2 adults and a five year old and a 2 year old. If the food and service was actually good, then sure, I'd be perfectly happy to spend the money and enjoy the experience.

But we definitely will not be coming back. There are wayyy too many other better establishments out there that serve great Mexican food at lower prices.

The head chef of Paseo should be...

Google - Paseo Yelp - Paseo

STAR RANKING: 3.5 Stars

OVERALL: Some restaurants in Disney are tourist traps and overhype but I can say this place is pretty good and I would definitely go back for the food (not so much anything else)…

FAMILY FRIENDLY: Yes PET FRIENDLY: No PARKING: Disney parking

FOOD/MENU: Guacamole (haas avocados, tomato, cilantro, onion, lime, serrano, tortilla chips) $18: 5 Stars – Creamy, flavorful, and delicious! We added crispy pork belly ($3) and chicharron ($2) but not really worth the extra five bucks when you barely get anything. The Guac is good enough without any additional.

Lyonnaise Salad (begian endive, lardons, croutons, green lentils, poach egg, avocado, serrano peppers, honey vinaigrette) $19: 3 Stars – Poach egg done to perfection, and I love a poach egg, but I didn’t think it went with the salad. The endive needed more vinaigrette and also to be chopped! I hate salad that requires me to cute it myself… The green lentils was what I was the skeptical item on the dish but I really enjoyed it.

Mejillones (p.e.i. mussels, saffron beurre blanc, dried chorizo, pickled jalapenos, charred masa madre bread) $27: 5 Stars – THE BEST THING at this restaurant. The combination of flavor and the charred bread went so well together. And like ALL mussel based dish, I would have liked more bread because I wanted to soak up ALL the sauce.

Shrimp Aguachile (lime juice cured shrimp, cucumber, cilantro, red onion, chiles toreados, avocado, yuzu-lime-soy aguachile) $24: 2 Stars – this was my least favorite dish. Normally there should be a balance of salty, sour, umami, etc. but this made my face pucker super hard LOL and with it being so sour, you would think the shrimp should have been cured but I’m pretty sure the shrimp was still pretty raw. The only thing I was probably happy about with this dish was that I didn’t get food poisoning, yea!

Pulpo Enamorado (roasted octopus, tuna aioli, salsa macha, pickled vegetables) $24: 4 Stars – The octopus was amazing! So many restaurant f- up the char but this was done so well! Nice char bringing just enough smokiness paired so nicely with the tender texture. The only reason I did not give it 5 stars was the weird side thing. To this day, I’m still not sure what it is and why it was even needed. Just give me a second piece of tentacle!

RESTAURANT/SERVICE: Like most restaurant in DT DL, it was nicely done, clean, polish, etc. I server was extremely nice but honestly, he was kind of weird if you add up all the things that happen when it came to our drinks. My husband wanted a bottle of red wine and the waiter came back multiple times – once because he said they were all sold out of red wine by the glass though we stated a bottle, another time to tell us ALL the red wine bottles were also sold out (even though we can clearly see bottles at the bar) , when we pressed again, he came back but forgot the wine opener. When he did find one, he told us that it was hard to find one since the staff is not allowed to bring their own due to security check going into Disney and the restaurant only has one opener. Seriously… I don’t know how you can lie about that and if he’s not lying, I’m surprise a restaurant at DT DL cant afford to provide multiple wine opener when the restaurant is so big and has a decent size wine list (which also goes back to how “ALL” the red wine were sold out)...

Let me start with the pros it is always good to start with a positive of any experience.

Keeping in mind that this restaurant has just opened they're still working out a lot of The kinks one thing that cannot be overlooked though is the fact that the food was not as great as I was anticipating.

The best thing I ate the Carne Asada absolutely incredible seasoned and fun.

The queso fundido was phenomenal With Fresh Chips

I am not a fan of Mango not at all but the dessert was phenomenal and very creative with the isomalt Ring and the sorbet was perfectly churrned.

The amuse was fun & tasty Beautiful Tortilla with a wonderful taste of Oaxaca in a few bites

I let the post know my son is autistic she gave us the perfect spot to sit in the restaurant to enjoy our experience and I am forever grateful.

The restaurant itself is very cozy very clean very professional staff are waitress Hannah was really knowledgeable about the menu

Now the part of the review that I don't like to give but have to share with everyone who trusts me to give an honest opinion from a chef's perspective. Reiterating like I said this place just opened

TLAYUDA I found this dish very odd the flavors did not match anything that I was expecting. The sauce taste like canned tomato sauce or paste. Some of the meat was hot some of the meat was cold it did not make sense to me at all & I felt it could have been more crispy.

GUACAMOLE First thing that sold me was this guacamole made table side however it's a New concept and they haven't got established yet I can respect and understand that.

With that being said the avocados tasted like they were over ripe I did up charge on the pork belly which I would not have known was pork belly if you did not tell me. It was more like deep fried pancetta.

ESQUITES I was very curious to try this we love a really good Street corn. The corn taste like it came from a can because corn is not in season at the moment. A little bit of char on the corn would have gave it a lot more flavor. The corn came warm to cold to our table in a small bowl.

CHILE RELLENO It felt incomplete. Though the pepper was roasted nicely the flavors did not come together for me at all and once again the infamous tomato sauce was on this plate. Texture is something that's definitely missing from this dish right here. A very mushy experience when you're just eating a roasted pepper with mushrooms inside of it

CORN SOMETHING? ABSOLUTELY GET AN E FOR EFFORT This dish was really weird and I mean weird when you make a custard with saffron & Corn accompanied with bagged caramel corn which I guess is appropriate for Disneyland should not be on a fine dining menu.

Overall the kitchen has Talent you can see glimpses of the talent throughout the menu some of the techniques are insane especially with the carne asada it's phenomenal. And even the corn desert that I did not like very much was very creative.

Cost of the meal plus the tip came to about $230 We did not get one individual plate we shared everything I wanted to taste the best of what this chef and this team had to offer.

The things that I liked I loved and I would come back just to eat those...