La Tolteca — Restaurant in Azusa

Passed by La Tolteca today from our trip up the mountains of Azusa. I noticed the amount of great reviews this place had so I was expecting something great, but unfortunately I was completely let down.

My wife and I ordered three different plates in total which were an order of carnitas served with rice and beans, two shrimp tacos, and an order of chicken flautas.

Let's start with one of my favorite dishes, shrimp tacos. I don't think there has ever been a shrimp taco I've personally disliked, sadly this has to be it. The tacos came served on a really hot plate with two large corn tortillas, three normal sized shrimp, and a ton of lettuce. Yes, lettuce. Normally one would expect cabbage for shrimp tacos but not here. The ratios were very off as well. It was far too much tortilla (two tortillas per taco to be exact) and lettuce for the amount of shrimp that were given. Not only that but the shrimp itself were flavorless, and it didn't help that the tacos didn't have some kind of mayo or any kind of sauce that you'll find in any other place. At least a slice of lemon would be great to join these tacos, just to get some kind of flavor here.

Next up are the chicken flautas. The portions were quite generous with these. It's two chicken flautas with lettuce and quite an amount of guacamole a sour cream on the side. I have to admit, I was hoping for a great chicken flauta once I took the first crunchy bite but after the second one I was let down once again. Normally when it comes to chicken flautas, restaurants tend to add cheese inside the taco so it could give it some flavor but inside there was only shredded dry chicken. Actually it tasted more like tinga, but with tinga you usually get cheese on top. So no, no cheese anywhere on the chicken flautas. It didn't help that the chicken was completely dry as well.

Lastly was the plate of carnitas served with rice and beans. This one was not too bad actually. It came with tortillas but I had left over tortillas from the shrimp tacos. There not much to say about this plate. Maybe just that the rice and beans didn't taste fresh. But that's a common thing for restaurants to do. The carnitas itself were soft but some lemon, cilantro and diced onion would have been great on the side.

Overall I was expecting much more from this place. Especially from seeing all the positive reviews. I probably wont be coming back here anytime soon and that's unfortunate because I do plan to make more trips up the mountains of Azusa more often. It was a very nice first time trip for my family. Hope this place makes some drastic changes to some of our (my wife and I)...

Went here and the order taker asked if I was ready. I said yes, stepped forward to place my order and he started talking to others. So I waited. Then when he was finished talking, he said he was ready when I was, as if I was busy thinking instead of waiting for him. Then I placed my order, but he didn’t hear me, so I repeated it. And he said, you want what? I then stopped and said, maybe I should ask if you’re ready, and smiled. He didn’t smile, but just asked, what’d I like to have. I said I’d like to get a carnitas burrito plate, but it’s not in the list, and he said don’t worry I can make that for you. I said, wait, for how much, and he said $13 something, which is more expensive, almost like ordering a plate of something for $8.50 and a separate burrito. So I thought I wasn’t there to get hustled, so I just asked for a beef enchilada plate. When the food came it looked great. But the beef smelt like it’d gone bad two days earlier. I smelt it again and it reminded me of the South East Asian markets in Asia where they serve dog and cat. It really pungent, and they spice it a lot, and when they do that you don’t taste a lot of spice, because the meatiness of dog and cat cancels out the spice. So I started looking for how much spice was in the “beef”, and they used a lot of different spices, but it doesn’t taste spicy, which makes me think that that’s not beef they are serving, OR the meat was so far past its expiration date they had to drown it in spices to kill the smell. Well, they failed because you can still get a whiff of it, and the taste matches the smell. I will NOT be back here, and whatever you do, don’t...

We are third generation family that had been going here to eat multiple times a month. We had a few issues with our order not showing up in a timely matter, didn’t matter whether it was slow or busy. But today, it was busy, but our order again was lost, and we waited for 50 minutes, no food, and no one asked us what we were waiting for. One of the guys doing the food service, short, heavy set guy, said he would get our food, and see what the manager would do about getting our money back. We waited another five minutes, no food or manager, who should have come to our table, and talked to us. Instead, we got up from our table, went to the counter where you order, and asked for the manager. The guy who had taken our receipt started acting like he owned the place, taunting my husband, who is disabled, and the banter kept going for a few minutes, the manger finally came over, waived us over to give us our money back, apologized for our order getting lost, and I had told him how his employee had acted, and how it’s about customer service and diffusing a situation, and not be the cause of it. And then to say to his manager, “yeah! Go ahead and give them their money back!” Most of us would have been fired from our jobs for this kind of behavior towards a customer. Whether or not this happens, who knows. But from our experience today, we won’t ever be back, which is a shame, to lose those kind of memories with family...