Border Grill Truck — Restaurant in Los Angeles

On the border Grill in downtown Los Angeles offers thoughtful, fine dining Mexican food. We there before a concert nearby and we're seated right away (we had a reservation. Closed parentheses in the bar area (that it was actually plenty of seating in the main dining room which looked it might've been a little bit more comfortable in that area to sit.)

We are around chips and salsa right away the chips are really good and there are three different kinds of salsa which they bring you, green, Tia, a smoky read, and a hot red – all of which were good. Long live the idea that it Mexican restaurants you should be given free chips and salsa and when you sit down. Occurs on the Mexican restaurants that charge money for chips and salsa.

I had the Beyond Meat Albondingas appetizer. I’ve seen Albondingas on various Mexican food restaurant menus before and have never been able to have them because I'm a vegetarian. I was very excited to see the maid here with beyond meat, and they were really delicious with the tomato sauce they were served in and the fresh cheese on top. Thank you so much border Grill for Catering to my diet with this delicious starter. I loved it.

For my main, I had the three tacos meal with one each of their vegetarian tacos offerings. These included Tacos Flacos which was served in a lettuce cup instead of a tortilla and filled with mushrooms kale and leeks. It was hearty and good though I didn’t love the sriracha aioli it came with (more my personal preference than it’s quality), A Crispy Rajas which is filled with creamy potatoes, roasted chiles, cheese, avocado and grilled corn relish. This one was olid and physically satisfying but lacked flavor. And also the Sweet Potato Black Bean which was the most flavorful with savory sweet potatoes in it. (This was good but my personal preference would for it to have been more sweet.)

These were served with two kinds of rice and black beans…The beans tasted great, but the rice was a tad under cooked for my tastes.

We had a bit of an issue with the food taking a while. Apparently the kitchen had lost our ticket…it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal except that we were trying to make it to a concert nearby so when the food finally did arrive we had to eat fairly quickly. How restaurants respond to these kinds of issues is really telling about their commitment to their customers, and in this case they really went above and beyond. The manager personally delivered the food to our table with an apology and an offer to cover the meal. (Doesn’t get any better than that!) And our server had previously brought us a free tamales appetizer to eat while we waited. So although the timing wasn’t great for our particular situation, we felt very well taken care of and were very impressed with how important our satisfaction was to the. (We hadn’t actually complained about the time when all this happened.)

We would definitely go back under more relaxed circumstances and try some of the other vegetarian options and we thought it was helpful that the menu was labeled with V and GF for anyone who was a vegetarian and...

Been living within a stone's throw for many years, but never really thought I'd be eating here one day. The enticement of happy hour always gets me but this happy hour is not one to be happy about. For 3 dollars per street taco, I really expected more than what I could get for half off at a taco truck, but sadly it's not so. Luckily alcohol happy hour was comparable to neighboring bars. Entree prices range from high teens to high twenties, but in my book, Mexican food should never be that pricey. My thoughts is that this place is made to be convenient for tourists staying at the connected Westin Bonaventure. The upside is that service is friendly and there's an isolated patio.

-=-Carnitas Plate-=- The carnitas here are of the thicker cube cuts variety. Each bite was soft, tender and fatty, all my favorite qualities. You get about 3 good cuts of pork that rest on the scoop of grits underneath. Carnitas were good, no complaints there, since each cut was juicy and melted in your mouth. The piece of chipotle glazed bacon on top seemed like a ploy to just get more meats on the item description, but I could have done without it. The highlight of this plate was the Roasted Corn Grits. It was just so creamy and tasty. I was tasting buttery cornbread in every bite. The corn grits might be the only thing that may get me...

After a few less than stellar trips to this Border Grill location, I thought I'd never go back. But with a concert at Staples, and a friend dying to go, I decided to give it one last try. And I am so glad we did! Everything was fantastic: from the food (the ceviche was 100% better than last trip, the veggie chilaqulies were delicious, and the soup (carrot coconut) was beyond! ), to the service (Claire was beyond helpful and went the extra mile), to the hostess who was personable and caring. But the most impressive part was the energetic manager, Julie, who we would later find out was new there. Well, Julie has to be the main reason I felt our experience was so vastly different from all the other trips to Border Grill DTLA (I've been to Santa Monica and Las Vegas locations both multiple times without incident). She was so friendly, and so happy to be there, and checking on all of the tables, you could feel how much she cared about this restaurant. And it really has had an awesome effect!

PLUS - we came to discover (thanks again, Julie!) that Border Grill offers a free shuttle for their guests to take to any DTLA event! So we were able to skip out on paying $25 for parking at LA Live and leave our car in the Border Grill...