Cazadores Mexican Restaurant of Indian Harbour Beach — Restaurant in Indian Harbour Beach

Cazadores Mexican Restaurant 630 E. Eau Gallie Blvd. Indian Harbour Beach, FL 32937

4.5 Stars

Once upon a time, after Tippy’s Taco House closed, if you got the jones for some Mexican food your only choice in Brevard County was Taco Bell. Do a quick Google search and you come up with 77 choices. This is a very good thing; however, the bad comes with the influx of the good. Sooner or later you will run into a flagitious owner running your basic tourist/gringo clip joint. I am happy to say this was NOT the case when I visited Cazadores Mexican Restaurant in IHB.

This gem of Mexican cuisine is located almost in the middle of our quaint little barrier island on E. Eau Gallie Blvd. Geraldo is my waiter today and he greeted this gringo with a hearty, “Hello, Amigo.” Immediately feeling at home, I asked Geraldo for an order of their Eponymous Ceviche and some Street Tacos Lengua (Beef Tongue).

Sitting back to take a few pictures, I looked up, and low and behold, Geraldo was heading over with the chow. This was obviously not made to order as it took all of 45 seconds for my food to come out of the kitchen. Remaining professional, I calmly overlooked that fact and dug into the Cazadores Ceviche.

This dish was a cavalcade of yumminess even though some fish was a bit frozen. The flavors were spectacular. The standard sides of rice and beans were nothing to write home about, but they were certainly fine for Brevard County. I don't mean that as a slight to the chef, more a dis to our unrefined palate here in Brevard. After another bite, I moved on to the Street Tacos Lengua to make sure the flavors were copacetic (they were).

If you ever want to test a restaurant's mettle, order one of the most obscure, bizarre dishes you can find on the menu, hence why I placed an order for the beef tongue street tacos. Normally, I would never taste food that can taste me back. They also have goat tacos, but I'm not eating as much as I once was, so I had to cut back. One bite and I knew I made the right choice. The beef tongue was tender, flavorful, and cooked to perfection. I will return to try the goat tacos; if you do before me, drop me a note and let me know how they are.

The Big Boy says, “If you find yourself beachside and want Mexican food right now, this place will do...

This place is about average. But there are a few things which raise huge red flags. The biggest one being that on the menu, there's a tiny text which states that there is a $4 charge for dishes which are shared. This is a horrible business practice especially considering this charge isn't disclosed anywhere else. While I wasn't affected by this charge on my visit, seeing this message on the menu was very much a detractant to coming back as my spouse and I enjoy sharing dishes and genuinely don't feel like extra should be charged just based on whether or not people share the same dish. Either this needs to be clarified on the menu or this business practice needs to go as I don't want to eat in fear of this awful charge. Next, I ordered the Chile rellenos. They were incredibly soggy and instead of a nice melty cheese sauce inside, the chilies were filled with nasty soggy blocks of cheese as pictured below. I WILL NOT give this business a second chance until the $4 charge for sharing dishes changes. They need to either change the wording and make it more transparent or get rid of this terrible practice altogether. Again, there's also lots of room for improvement with the Chile rellenos

Update: the original review was 7 months ago. And 7 months ago, the business gave a very sincere reply and apology. But just today, this restaurant changed their reply to the most generic "thank you for the review" message. Did they just completely delete and disregard the original reply and apology? Something odd is going on with that. Generic review replies are an absolutely atrocious business practice and it makes the customer feel like their feedback is trashed. Absolutely no effort is going to customer care anymore. It is absolutely egregious to change what was a great reply to this review, to a copy pasted generic reply. Absolutely awful business practices...

I'm very picky about my Mexican food. So to start the salsa was great (big factor) if a place has crappy salsa 9 times out of 10 so will be the food. Not the case here!! I didn't get to try the table side guacamole (but I definitely will next time) yet it looked very appealing. I went off my typical order of the same ol same ol and ordered their Mexican Pizza. Not quite what I was expecting, yet very surprisingly good. Very juicy from the meat so not anything you can pick up. Very messy with a ton of toppings. Beware if you don't like jalapenos make sure to have them take them off. There is a generous amount on top. I didn't eat all my food as I wanted to save room for desert. So I boxed it up for the next night after work. Desert - they have a few options which made it hard to decide. They had the typical fried ice cream, sopapillas, flan, churros and some version of a pineapple upside down cake. I decided to do the sopapillas, not your typical sopapillas they weren't big fluff balls, they were shaped like potato chips yet had the dough of the sopapillas that are normally big balls. Plenty plenty of cinnamon sugar and came with a huge scoop of vanilla ice cream drizzled in chocolate in the middle. Not what I was expecting but I enjoyed. The fried ice cream that a couple people at my table ordered is huge so if you don't have room in your belly that is definitely a dessert to share. So were the soapias it had a pretty good portion of cinnamon sugar chips covering the plate. Next time I will try the flan just because I didn't this time. Will definitely be going back and taking my absolutely picky Mexican eating...