Casa Mendoza — Restaurant in La Quinta

I’ve been here a few times recently and I really like it— the wait staff is very friendly and accommodating and the restaurant has a great vibe with lots of Mexican colors, music, margaritas, and clients. The booths are your best option, but there’s not many of them. There’s a nice little patio out front where you could also eat but you miss some of that cool Mexican restaurant vibe they got going inside. The food is really good. The enchiladas Mole are terrific. It’s a strong authentic sauce. I just love the shredded beef tacos. They’re extremely good made perfectly and full of shredded beef. They have a terrific tortilla soup. The guacamole and chips are very good. They have a nice salsa with chips to start. The margaritas are expensive so I usually stick with the house. Margarita— it’s not a top-notch tequila but it’s really good and it’s satisfies me. They’re big and delicious. There’s a lot of choices in the La Quinta area for Mexican food and there’s a lot of great restaurants and I put this one right on top with some of the better ones. That says a lot because I don’t like to go to downtown La Quinta and I don’t go there often but lately when I want Mexican food it’s the first thing I think about. Enjoy it.

P. S. I recently tried the fried shrimp with garlic oil on the side. And I can’t wait to go back and...

NOT coming back... What a huge disappointment! We (party of 6) had dinner at Casa Mendoza on December 27th. We had a 3 year old and a 5 year old plus 4 adults. It took 65 minutes for our food to come to the table. I noticed 2-3 other parties seated nearby that came at the same time or after we did who were paying for their meals and leaving when our food arrived. It was difficult trying to keep the 3 year old entertained for such a long time but he did a pretty good job sitting at the table. The food was just OK: chicken fajitas, steak fajitas, chimichanga, and tortilla soup (soup was good but barely room temp and had to get it heated up) Within 2 minutes of finishing the meal, but still trying to get the 3 year old to eat a little more the manager appeared and asked us to hurry up and leave because "there are about a hundred people standing outside the door"!!! It was so insulting and rude especially considering that it took over an hour to get served our food. Also, the kids meals are $12...pretty high price for a burger or burrito. As we left there were maybe up to 10 people outside waiting to be seated....not exactly 100. After coming to this restaurant often over the past 10 years we will...

I've had this restaurant on my "to go" list for a while. I am very disappointed in the experience. We started off ok. Seated right away. Drink orders taken and brought. Chips and salsa were good. A bug landed in one of our blended margaritas, and it was quickly replaced with a chunky ice, mediocre replacement. Even though it didn't seem busy, our waitress didn't take our food order for quite a while. We were almost finished with the chips and salsa before our waitress finally took our order. Glasses of water were brought by a bus boy who pointed at the empty chips and said, "Oh, chips," but after 25 minutes, no one ever brought another helping. The food that arrived was a huge disappointment. By this time, we were over the whole experience and asked for the check. I was relieved to see they removed one of the entrees from the check because we really did not enjoy our food at all. Overall, it was a very expensive experience. One Entree, that wasn't even as good, or equivalent, to a neighborhood taco shop, and what should have been 2 happy hour Margaritas, cost me $65 total. It's sad when the chips and salsa were the best food brought to our table. Needless to say, we...