La Catrina Tacos & Tequila Bar, St. Augustine — Restaurant in Fruit Cove

Best Tex(FL?)-Mex experience I've had since living around Austin and San Antonio for 15+ years. My search is over: I finally found a Florida bartender able to produce a Mexican martini! Food is particularly phenomenal, drinks are very creative and ridiculously good, and the funky, fun and friendly atmosphere is created by genuinely amazing staff like Ruben. My hats off to y'all!

2025 Edit/add: I thought I'd give an update. Anyways, still love it. It's like being in central Tejas again but actually better than most Austin joints. They just need to put Mexican Martinis on their menu, something that the bartenders so far have been happy to make on request (and have done a great job at, actually, unlike literally any other restaurant bartender we've attempted anywhere outside of Longhorn country).

The drinks on the menu are creative and quality too, beyond my expectations even with "tequila bar" in their title.

Food still tastes phenomenal. This is still the best "Mex" place i've been to in North Florida. Fact. But I will always knock a star off for the food rating though when a restaurant's fryer is like everyone else's: so-called "vegetable" oil based with a likely dash of "anti-foaming" agents that have been making us all sick for decades. Go back to strict animal fats, folks. Lard here would be traditional.

The service and atmosphere is still superb. It would be nice to have something outside for the kids (littles) to keep them occupied in the fenced area, maybe just some bean bags in the corner or something to play with, although I know it's tough to do with limited apace, trying to maximize seating.

Regarding the quality here, I would be remiss not giving credit to the fine, demanding Saint Johns County patrons, the same folks that keep the lovely tallow-frying Embers & Iron in business. Keep it...

Update: The owners have reached out and apologized for the poor first impression, and I am appreciative of their effort. We have ordered two more times from them and everything has been perfect and the food has been very good. Updating the review to 5 stars in response to the courtesy shown by them. Thank you.

Tried this place for the first time in about 10 yrs through uber eats. We have been avoiding this location since it used to be the old La Nap, which used to have to have the worst service in all of Saint Johns Co. Unfortunately, it was still disappointing. We had about 20% of our food order not arrive. Multiple tacos and an appetizer, we're just not delivered. Since everything was paid for in advance, there seems little we can do about it in terms of compensation. I would assume, that if you agree to be part of food delivery service, you would show as much care for the food leaving your building to male sure its correct as you would the food being dropped off at the table. Im guessing a bag of food was just missed. IMO, not the fault of the driver, but the restaurant to assure the driver has everything. The food that did arrive was pretty good except the ciracha-mayo, shrimp tacos, they were not appealing. After some consideration, that was on us, bc they dont sound very good and they weren't. Looks like it will be another 10 yrs before we take a stab at trying to...

This place has really gone downhill We use to enjoy going there. One a month. Last evening never again Almost walked out to go to Benito next door waited 30 minutes to get waited on table was dirty basket waitress to clean it brought drinks said again table need cleaned. Put drinks down and asked for order there were 4 of us.told her 2 checks and please wipe table down . said ok. Food came through fit would not let them put it down till table was cleaned off 3rd time was asked.table finally got wiped down then only 1/2 the order was delivered. Asked about the other 2 didn't get put in. Had to wait for it now this waitress is not a new one been there.no apologies or anything Food was cold like it sat there no wonder we waited 30 minutes for it. After we asked for our checks she brought one aft we we told her 2 separate checks 3 times she got aggregated and said can't I just split it on your cards I said no we need 2 checks and I have a coupon. She left table Abe it was another 30 minutes to get the separate checks called manager to get checks all he said was sorry. She came back with our checks. I showed he the coupon. She was like you could of told me you had one da 2nd time mention it. Then. To pay my bills was another 20 minutes. she didn't listen to anything all evening...