El Chinaco Restaurant — Restaurant in Costa Mesa

Nothing about our food was accurate:

Chile relleno was made with green sauce that is usually used for bistec (stake), the chile was over cooked and dry, and the cheese filling was like... Pizza cheese. Chilaquiles we're also with the bistec salsa verde, and was topped with wayyy to much sour cream and like bagged american "Mexican cheese" The pupusas we're not fully cooked and had almost no filling. The pupusa sauce tasted like you just diluted tomato sauce with water and added oregano, there was no flavor.

Overall, okay if you're just really hungry.. it didn't taste bad, but if you're looking to order at an authentic Mexican or Salvadoran food there are way better options. The employees were nice, but I come for the food. It was the most non-authentic, authentic Mexican and Salvadoran food.

If you want bomb pupusas San Sivar is less than 5 minutes away and there's better Mexican food...

WORST experience EVER. I’m very embarrassed on how they treated me and my friends. They never had pupusas so I recommended them to try it. These girls working were laughing & making fun of us. They blasted the music off a speaker they brought in. It was like a Club where we were yelling to hear each other & kept asking each other to repeat what the other said. It gave us a headache. Yo le pregunté a la muchacha si pudiera bajar la musica Porque no podía escuchar a los demas hablar. Me dijo que sí pero se rieron y le subieron más. Even though I asked them to turn the music down just a little, they laughed & turned it up even more. When we were leaving my friend told the girl in pink that we couldn’t hear each other talk over the music. She said, “It’s our restaurant. So you need to understand.” Then burst out laughing along with the other girls. Disappointed. First Pupusa...

This is the 3rd or 4th iteration of El Chinaco. It has recently undergone an ownership change. However, the pupusas are still HUGE - portions are veeeeery generous - and it's still the best place to get pupusas in Southern California. Hell, I might go insofar as to say that they are even better than in El Salvador! (With the exception of maybe La Suiza, but, then you'd have to pay 800 bucks for a roundtrip ticket and try them out yourself.)

Sauces are good. I would pay extra to get extra hot sauce. I think my only recommendation is to not use Styrofoam containers and those little plastic containers for large amounts of sauce. The Styrofoam containers will melt from the heat and the little containers for the sauce are not good for large orders. Otherwise, I would still rank this place as 5 starts.

Support this local business and try them out. You...