Cha-Cha's Tacos — Restaurant in Loma Linda

A local favorite of mine that has been around ever since I could remember. Cha-Cha's brings up memories of fixing up my aunt's rental house around the neighborhood - filling up our stomachs after a long day's work of cleaning and prepping the house for new tenants. Like many hole-in-the-wall Mexican places around the Inland Empire, they pretty much offer it all - burritos, tacos, quesadillas, y bebidas - ellos lo tienen (they have it)! I love their salsa here because it's made more with peppers than tomatoes here, some places are mainly tomato and a little bit of peppers, but not here. I usually get a shredded beef, rice and cheese burrito and sometimes I'll add a little bit of sour cream to it. I haven't had their tacos (like street tacos) but their hard shell tacos are really good and not too greasy - a lot of other places' hard shell tacos are too greasy for even my liking. I don't believe they make their tamarindo and jamaica from scratch because it comes from a dispenser, but I like it; it's that familiar, really sweet jamaica flavor that a lot of us have come to know and love.

A couple years back they sold their operation to someone else, but the name and sign of this place was, what I believe, too iconic for Redlands and their own patrons to allow them to change the sign. It's small, but their food packs...

I really don’t like giving low star ratings if I can help it. I always wanna give credit where credit is due and not give credit where there is no merit for it. This is a good food spot because the food is good but the service is molasses slow. Last week on Friday I stopped by around 11:30am (which i totally forgot is typically lunch time) and a great deal of businesses and it’s workers go here for lunch. The line was already forming but I had 25 minutes to spare before my next stop. After waiting for two different people to each place a large office order for what it appeared to be from their co-workers and it just so happed to be their turn to make a food run for them, I finally place a simple order of a chorizo burrito that’s it. I waited, and waited and waited again for what it seems to be like 20 minutes (not exaggerating) my number was finally called only so they can tell me that they ran out of chorizo!!! At this point I was already pressed for time so I asked for my money back and went on my way. The moral of this story is, yes this is a good food spot if you have the time but their customer service and communication between the cook/cashier and customers needs to improve. This way customer satisfaction...

Friday afternoon around 4:30

For take out, ordered a Fiesta Grande Burrito - wrapped nicely in tin foil so kept the burrito nice and warm all the way home; fresh ingredients that you can taste in the burrito, cheese is proper melted and Mexican rice tastes good. The shredded beef is not chewy like other places, and it is well seasoned.

Salsa is quite good - has flavor and it’s spicy at the same time; some places have it flavorful but not spicy or viceversa.

At 8 bucks, comes with a small drink, it’s good bang for the buck - $1 extra for Horchata but have yet to try it out.

Wait wasn’t overly long like others have mentioned, but only had 2 people ahead of me; maybe at peak times the wait is longer since it did seem that not many in the kitchen.

TL;DR Fresh tasting, cheap and filling. Great bang for the buck - expect to wait...