Taqueria Vallarta — Restaurant in California

Checkin July 2023: quality has gone down again. There seems to be a new crew at the front of house and the one guy dominating the scene is dancing around, singing like an intoxicated foolish young man, and acting completely silly. The end result seems to be a return to mediocre quality control and lack of consistent flavor and cooking. Twice now, the burritos have been extremely wet, lacking in flavor, and for example, the Al pastor, ordered 3 times in a row, has been very different each time (first time great, the remainder really disappointing.) even going with the usually reliable carnitas today dashed my hopes the last weeks bad food was a one-off.

Will not be returning until I see the dancing silly people starting to take their craft more seriously, like the crew before, from about 3 months ago.

_————— I had posted a review a while ago, citing lackluster consistency and quality. That was at the height of the pandemic, lockdowns, burnout, etc. I gave only 3 stars.

Today I’m back to say TV is Back On Top of its flavor and quality game!!! I go there frequently now and it’s always been as good I’m expecting it to be, which is… tasty, delicious, and generous in its portions!

I heartily recommend! Nice...

Decent food. Friendly (enough) staff. But... Parking is a pain. HOMELESS PEOPLE everywhere! Even the parking lot guards told us to park close by and park at your own risk. No public restroom. (ie, = no place to wash your hands)

Santa Cruz, CA has a MAJOR homeless problem. They are all over the place. We are at a place and time in our society where there are ample homeless shelter opportunities in EVERY CITY... yet this Santa Cruz homeless population chooses to panhandle and cause problems for the city and for tourists. If you must go to Santa Cruz, you can still enjoy it. But you will see what I mean about the homeless problem...

Would I go back again to this restaurant? Probably not. And again, that's more of a reflection on this city as a whole and the aforementioned. If this restaurant was in a more accessible and remote area of Santa Cruz, I'd probably give them another chance. But not where they currently...

Okay. Now I remember why I stopped coming here. It's inconsistent. One time it'll be really good the next time it'll be really subpar. Had two tacos, one prawn and one fish. For example, today, my fish taco was cold even though he brought it straight to me. And the tortillas on both my tacos were really undercooked which meant that they got soggy really quickly because there's a lot of liquid involved in the fish tacos for some reason. The prawns were at least not overcooked, which is something that I find is a common happenstance at taquerias. What I don't understand is why both of them tasted exactly the same flavor-wise. I guess it's because they're using the same sauce? My husband's burrito wasn't good either. He was super bummed.

Both of us have a lot of memories of hanging out at the beach and coming here to get food but over the years it's gotten really inconsistent and weird.

Anyway, it...