Acapulco — Restaurant in Costa Mesa

We've been coming to Acapulco, Costa Mesa, for over 20 years. There used to be a tennis club, with courts right behind Acapulco's outdoor patio. Back in the old days, we'd sit out there, and watch tennis matches, through a chain-link fence, while we dined. Now this is a large storage unit lot, & the tennis courts are but a distant memory. Progress is not always a good thing.

Anyway, we were in the area, on 8/30/24, after picking up my camera at Canon. We decided to drop in, after a long absence from here, to do lunch.

This restraunt's interior decor has been revamped, & looks casual & beachy. We lunched inside, seated at a booth, overlooking Acapulco's outdoor patio, which is a large & nicely landscaped...BTW.

Our server was extremely upbeat & friendly. He quickly brought our drinks, chips and salsa. The tortilla chips were thin & super crispy, just like I remember them. The salsa was tasty, with a bit of heat & tender tomato chunks in it.

We looked over the menu, which is fairly robust...so many choices! A couple things caught my eye...they had a plate with grilled shrimp & carne asada, which looked enticing, for $27. I ended up ordering the $17.99 Birria Tacos- 3 medium-sized tacos, filled with tender beef, queso & cilantro & onions. A bowl of tasty Birria Consume was included, to dunk the tacos in. My meal was delicious, although I had to carefully avoid wearing all that dribbling juice.

My wife ordered the Asada Burrito, with Chicken. This was an eye popping HUGE burrito, served with a tasty sauce, that she would've liked more of, plus an artful squiggle of sour cream, on top. The chicken inside this burrito was expertly flavored...super yummy.

Acapulco has a very reasonably priced Lunch Buffet, set up in its own room, on Mondays through Fridays, & good Happy Hour prices on food & drink, plus an All You Can Eat Brunch on Sundays, with bottomless Mimosas.

We loved the food here, the service was great, & Acapulco was a perfect place to enjoy some delicious...

Went to Acapulco Restaurant on Thursday, June 27, 2019, with 2 of my friends. We go here often. Usually good. This was a whole different night. Everything was crazy. Our server, a young girl, had no idea what she was doing. We ordered nachos with grilled chicken and sauce on it for our appetizer. Then she came back to take our orders. Still no nachos. Then finally our food and nachos come all at the same time. One of our main orders was wrong also . The nachos came with shredded chicken and no sauce. She argues with us that the shredded chicken is grilled chicken. We send it back. We know what grilled chicken looks like. Is she kidding? We are now eating our main meals. Again nachos come. We get grilled chicken but still no sauce. What is it this server does not understand? Nachos with grilled chicken and sauce. How simple is that!!! Now we are full from our meal and don’t need our nachos. Other customers are getting up and having to go to the bar, to get their own drinks because service is so bad. The poor person that was bringing out the food was getting so mad because things he was bring out were all wrong due to the bad server everyone had !! Several of the other employees were arguing behind the bar. We could all see them and hear them. What is going on? Then when we get our bill she had overcharged us $4. Said that was the extra charge for our chicken. At the beginning she told us for chicken it was $1 more. Finally she got the manager to take off that $4. They should have taken off the price of our nachos. I called the manager, Noel, today. She was not the manager on Thursday. She said she talked with the server. The only compensation she said when I called back the second time was that I could come pick up some nachos. What? Is she kidding. Most likely...

This place was absolutely dreadful. Even though the restaurant was relatively empty, there was a wait of 10 minutes to be seated. Staffing throughout the entire facility seems to be an issue. After being seated and having a cocktail we realized that this was going to be an underwhelming experience. The watermelon margarita specialty came out completely flavorless and was not remotely sweet. It was just an overpriced well drink tequila catastrophe. When the chips and salsa hit the table the salsa was separated and watery. We ordered the combination platter, shrimp cocktail, and the carne asada tacos. The carne asada tacos were supposed to be on soft flour tortillas, when they arrived it was hard corn shell tortillas. The meat was under seasoned it desperately needed salt. The rice and beans or both very generic and bland. The Mexican shrimp cocktail was completely inedible. The shrimp had an off-putting taste and slimy texture. The sauce that it was in was bland requiring some kind of citrus to make it pop. The sampler platter was lacking citrus and some element of elevation to help keep me interested in eating it. I understand this is a chain restaurant but whoever is cooking in the back needs to find some sort of purpose in cuisine. The entire food experience was soulless and not worth the elevated prices and that great California surcharge. The only positive aspect of this experience was my waitress who tried desperately to keep us interested in the restaurant. But after a 20-minute wait for this awful food experience to begin, I must applaud her effort but it was completely in vain. After looking for the manager without any results we decided to leave with probably the worst food experience I have had in Orange...