Casita — Restaurant in Los Angeles

Casita is a nice tapas restaurant with friendly and attentive staff and great food.

Why would I give them a 3 stars then? Well there are a couple big flaws as I see it in regards to this restaurant.

I want to start by saying that the food tasted great. I loved the Taquitos and both tacos we tried were very good. The Guacamole and Salsa tower was great in between orders.

Additionally, our waiter was extremely knowledagable and friendly. It has many of the hallmarks of a 5 star restaurant.

HOWEVER, The restaurant is too packed. In my opinion I feel they could remove 10% of the tables without any major impact to their operation. The tables are simply TOO crammed together. The greatest distance between my table and the one next to us was maybe 3 feet and the shortest distance was literally inches.

A lady was seated next to us and the way the tables were situated she was completely surrounded by other tables. Over the course of about 20 minutes she wasn't visited once by a single server and she had to get up and complain to the hostess about the lack of attention given to her. Which I'm not surprised by because her table made it nearly impossible for a server to wait on her without the server literally being back to back with another table.

The cramped nature of the restaurant also makes it EXTREMELY loud. Do not come here if you want a peaceful or romantic dinner, you won't be able to have any conversations without practically yelling to your partner a foot away.

Secondly, for a tapas restaurant the prices are absolutely absurd. The order of 2 Gringo Tacos, ostensibly a small crispy taco with carne asada, costs $18. I'm not talking Taco Bell sized tacos, these are small street style tacos. $18 is utterly absurd. A more traditional order of 2 Al Pastor tacos cost $10. Nothing special about them to seperate them for an Al Pastor taco off the street corner which at most might cost you $3 but because you're sitting in a fancy white person tapas restaurant, you get the $4 surcharge. Even the sides are insane. An order of 4 corn tortillas will run you a $4.

While there is nothing wrong with Casita's food quality or service, their prices and extremely cramped restaurant leaves MUCH to be desired.

I wish I could recommend this place because I did enjoy the food but I...

If you are patient or need to work on being patient, try Casita.

Our reservation for 2 was at 7:45pm on Saturday, we arrived in time and checked in, then we waited, 45 minutes before we were sat at 8:30. At 8:45 I asked the hostess if she could help get our waitress. Our waitress got to the table about 10 minutes later, we ordered drinks and food. At 9:15 our food came, no water, no drinks. At 9:30 we got drinks, no water. 9:40 water came. And at 10 our main course finally arrived. Missing the salsa we ordered, which we mentioned but never came. When I asked what was happening with the slow service and missing salsa I was told they were out of the serve-ware they place the salsa in and that was causing the delays. Really?!?! If that’s destroying your restaurants service order more plates and cups and ramekins. I would have ordered a second drink. I also did not expect to have such a late dinner, we luckily had no plans after but if we had it would have been ruined.

This is a poorly run business, they have the staff from the looks of it but they way they are run is so messy. And to run out of plates and ramekins so you can’t bring out people’s food is an easy fix. But this place has larger problems. And they will loose money until they are fixed. Whoever is running this place needs to wake up and get it together or step away. It has potential.

The food was fine but nothing great for the horrible wait times are service. Anything we received was cold. Drinks were overpriced with creative names and nothing special.

The decor is interesting. Vines and greenery coming from the ceiling which did somewhat concern me when servers started walking out with various plates with flames coming from them. Just waiting for those vines to catch on fire with a packed restaurant.

We left at 10:30. It took then nearly 3 hours to serve a party of two dinner not by choice. We were not offered a discount or comp, just told it was the ramekins and plates anytime we said we were missing something from our order. This place is a mess, I do not recommend it unless you really enjoy waiting for subpar overpriced food and drinks. There are many other restaurants just steps away with far better...

First time dining here. My husband loves Mexican food so he made a reservation. (Not easy to get here by the way.) The place was packed at the bar and the patio tables when we arrived for a 7pm resy. Surprisingly, there were open tables inside but they were probably for the 7:30p group. We opted for a patio table and had a short wait. The place is cute but it is way too loud. Even on the patio, I found I was practically yelling. Makes for an exhausting dining experience in my opinion.

The food was ok. I'm not. Huge fan of Mexican food so I really can't judge. My husband enjoyed it and said it was good for "fancy" Mexican food. One thing I will say is they get 5 stars for the drinks. Creative and tasty. The selection of salsas on the menu for $6 is misleading. When you order it, the server will say "oh the tower?" and you will say yes. Just know that the price on that tower is $19. Tower equals the bag of chips and the quacamole plus 5 bowls of salsa you see on everyone's table. Just the 5 salsas are 6 bucks. We also ordered the flaming panels (cheese) - good, the fish tacos ‐good...you get two, the lobster rice with coconut and lime- good and not covered in onions thankfully but borderline salty, and the hubs had the large plate Carne asada with a side of tortillas. He made his own tacos and enjoyed it though he looked like he had a tough time with the meat. He still liked it. Dessert was the butter cake with strawberries. It was that or churos with a caramel dipping sauce.

It took a while to get the check but our server Taylor was working hard to make sure her tables were not ignored. She did a good job. Folks were having fun, doing shots and the tables were turning over after about 90 minutes. It was cool and new and popular and I don't need to go back. Would I recommend it? Um... I guess but not with a large group and only if you are ok with an incredibly...