El Torito Mexican Grill — Restaurant in Paducah

On a recent trip to Paducah we were looking for some local Mexican food for dinner. (This should come as no surprise to anyone if you're paying attention.) Wifey found El Torito was less than a mile from our hotel. Just how easy was that?

It was a Friday evening and they were busy, but we walked in and were seated immediately. The menu at El Torito is ENORMOUS and, if I may, a bit intimidating.

The décor is very bright, vibrant, and colorful. El Torito has a great party/fun vibe to it.

I don't recall our server's name, be he was AWESOME. He joked with us and we had a great time. In no time we had a basket of fresh chips and salsa and our drinks. The chips were fresh as in "still warm" (the way they should be) and the salsa was On Point!

There are several dining areas at El Torito. We were surround by quite a few people who were having a great time. Yea, it was noisy, but it was FUN noisy. It wasn't conversations you really don't care about noisy, like "I really didn't care to know about some strange lady's doctor appointment and by the way, she picked up some cottage cheese on the way home...and Eleanor, did you hear what Sheila said about Joanne! Gasp How could she even?!?!".". This was people having conversation over awesome food and a killer margarita noisy.

I was fascinated by the Pollo Mango on the menu, and my fascination absolutely got the best of me. Grilled chicken breast topped with apricot and mango roasted chipotle sauce. It was the apricot and mango chipotle sauce that caught my attention more than anything.

Fast forward about 10 minutes and our awesome server (whose name we either never got or don't recall) delivered our food. He did it with a smile, made a corny joke, made us laugh, and disappeared....only to return a couple minutes later with drink refills.

The Pollo Mango was blow-my-mind awesome. The sweetness of the apricot and mango coupled with chipotle was something I never saw coming...and it was MAHVELOUS.

Each and every staff member was hustling keeping things going. Whether is was delivering food, clearing tables, or seating incoming customers, this restaurant was constantly in motion.

I know there's a Mexican restaurant in just about every town, and we've been to many, many, many, many......a lot of Mexican restaurants. It's the ones that stand out that make a difference. El Torito is absolutely one of the stand outs. I hope to visit here...

Just passing through Paducah and staying the night. We stopped in for dinner around 7pm. We were greeted and immediately sat at a table.

Our server asked us for our drink orders and brought us chips and salsa. I ordered the horchata which was good. I ordered the burritos tipicos with shredded beef. My husband ordered 2 street tacos al pastor and a Chile relleno. Our food came out pretty quick and nice and hot. The meat in my burritos was nicely flavored and tender. The ranchero sauce tasted like enchilada sauce and we're pretty sure it was the same sauce on the relleno. Neither of us cared for the ranchero sauce. If we came back we'd order the Chile relleno without the ranchero sauce. It was one of the better Chile rellenos we've had at a restaurant otherwise. The tacos were good. Our server was nice and attentive. We got the check and paid at the hostess stand on the way out. Good service and decent food. We just don't recommend the ranchero sauce. The portions are very nice sized, I didn't finish the burritos. The prices are very...

Being from Texas and travelling a lot to Mexico I eat a lot of Mexican food from authentic to Baja to Texmex. I love it all! Needless to say I am very discerning and picky but in all fairness I still give other areas the benefit of the doubt and have had some great Mexican food all around the United States. We were in Paducah for the week so we thought we would try this place out. The hot sauce and chips were actually very good. Great flavor to the sauce and the chips were warm and crisp, not stale. But that's where it ended for us. Out of our family of 4 none of us thought the food was very good. The margarita was very sweet and tasted like a mix. They brought my son the wrong meal, my husband requested a side of jalapenos that was never brought to him, and my pork carnitas were extremely fatty. Service was just as bad. The rest of the food just tasted like it was warmed up from the fridge/freezer. I would not recommend and would...