El Jardin Restaurant — Restaurant in Live Oak

Reporting Live from El Jardín.. Started the dinner with some chips and 3 dips! And a Margarita Pitcher! So far, so good!! For the dips, the Bean dip was a tad bit spicy but... ALL GONE. Salsa dip......Si Pica!! Cabbage Pico de gallo looking thing..... Didn't even touch it!! :). Now waiting for the entrees. (Grilled Enchiladas, and Chicken Mole Pueblano)

Grilled Enchiladas - rice and beans for sides are actually good!! Refried-beans were yummy and the rice wasn't dry. The enchiladas were good too! But they seemed like regular enchiladas to me. I didn't not see any grill marks on my enchiladas. Everything tasted pretty good, i think they used fresher ingredients than other mexican places around here. My Girlfriend got the chicken so I'll let her tell you her thoughts.

Girlfriend : Chicken mole- The mole by itself was delicious! You can definitely taste the hints of chocolate, but it still has that little hint of spice everyone craves. This plate also comes with rice and beans, and they are pretty up there with with some of the other great Mexican restaurants. It also came with either corn or flower tortillas, I got half and half and they were pretty basic. All in all a very good dish, and one I would definitely order again :D

For dessert: Yes! We saved room for dessert!! We ordered a Churro Doingo ( it's a typo for churro domingo). It's a Churro Sunday! Very good! The churro taste so go with the ice cream. I don't know why I never thought of this combination! I would definitely order again!

Overall: The food was really yummy. Service was excellent and all of our requests were made without question. I can't believe I have never been here in my 26 years living in Santa Cruz. We got treated really well, and we will definitely be coming back for the food and...

A cut above most of the Mexican restaurants in town as far as the taste profile. They don't really have vegetarian options though they were willing to replace beans for meat in the sopes. But they hadn't made or defrosted the sopes so you couldn't get that. They do a nice thing with the chips that they serve - they offer the regular red dipping sauce but they also offer a sauce that's beans and green sauce and a little sour cream - that is totally delicious and you can get an appetizer of the same ingredients that's slightly bigger than what they bring us the complimentary starter. Their combination plates dash especially when you choose the one with two items are absolutely huge they are so huge that my partner couldn't finish it - which is a first. They fall down on their desserts as do many Mexican restaurants. They're flan, for example, is served with four blobs of whipped cream and half a strawberry in each blob and a fried tortilla chip with some kind of what looked like Carmel sauce. I would definitely go back to this restaurant but I would skip desserts. My cocktail dash the raspberry mojito didn't really have enough alcohol in it. My partners cocktail which I believe was called the Cadillac which was some kind of Margarita had a very strong amount of alcohol in it. They recommended to me to try the pomegranate margarita next time and I'm definitely going to do that and hopefully it will have amount of alcohol. The surroundings are definitely many steps above the usual surroundings in the Mexican restaurants around here so all in all it's a pleasant place to dine. Our waiter really cared about us...

Awfully slow service. Two waitresses, one bartender, and the manager(?) all ignored our table and served two other tables that came in after us. This was despite the fact we had our menus down and were actively trying to catch their attention because we were ready for drinks and an app the moment we sat down. Not sure how they managed to overlook us for so long since there were four employees in the front and yet only five tables in total counting the ones that came in after us. In fact, the two tables that were there before us had already been served and one was taking care of their bill. None of the staff were busy, any one of them could have started our order. Just no excuse really. The fellow who finally took our order for some reason assumed we wanted the nachos with our meal even though they were on the app menu and not the dinner menu. So we had to wait extra long for them even after we were finally able to order. Always ask what the customer wants, never just assume.

The special margarita was just a mix of alcohols/other that didn't work together, the nachos nothing to write home about, but at least the fajitas were not bad. Still, not enough to make up for the...