Salsas Restaurant - Mediocre

After reading all the rave reviews, we thought we’d try out Salsas Restaurant (111 and Date Palm, Cat City). Before we even ordered, we had some serious doubts about this place. We almost left before being seated. If you like ultra bright coffee shop lighting, tables and decor coupled with a noise level so loud we couldn’t hear ourselves think, much less talk to one another, then this just might be your place. The service was friendly but rather slow considering how small the place is. Although Salsas touts their seafood lineup, I wanted to order the same standard dish I’ve eaten at countless Mexican restaurants here in SoCal, just to get a feel for how good their food is. (It’s not the specialties that make a solid restaurant, it’s how well they can do the basics.)

I ordered chicken enchiladas verde with beans and rice and a margarita to drink. Unfortunately, only one style of beans are offered here, the standard greasy refried type. Once the plate arrived, I was certainly surprised. Their version of this dish was placing three finger-diameter enchiladas stuffed with nothing but shredded chicken side by side, sprinkling a bit of Munster cheese over them and then trenching all three with a tasteless green sauce. It didn’t appear they’d even tried to bake the sauce and cheese onto the enchiladas! It was the most boring plate I’d been served in a long time. Ive bought better verde sauce out of a supermarket bottle. (Actually, they should have tried that. They’d have gotten better results.). Even the refried beans were absolutely tasteless! Just sort of pale, flesh-colored paste. The rice was serviceable and the “salad” that was supposed to come with the plate consisted of a tiny bit of shredded lettuce dropped on its corner, half a small tomato and a slice of cucumber. It was more like a plate garnish than a salad. Remember, this is all going on under interrogation strength lights and the din of the room.

Thinking well maybe my plate is a one-off (it can happen), I asked my husband how his food was. The same. Edible but CERTAINLY unremarkable. So we ate our food pretty much in silence (since we couldn’t hear each other anyway), paid the bill and left. I will say as positives, the three generations margarita was quite good and well worth the $9.00. And even with that one drink and two dinners, we still got out of there just under $40.00. So their pricing is not bad. But ya get what ya pay for.

If any of this sounds appealing to you, by all means please go for it. But for us, there’s just too many FAR superior, reasonably priced Mexican restaurants to choose from - even with a mile of this place. So I very seriously doubt we’ll be going back. But we tried it. Ya live and learn.