Piñatas Mexican Smokehouse — Restaurant in Port Huron

Stopped in here with the wife last night, always looking for a good new restaurant, especially locally. Came across them on a google search cause the wife was craving tacos and then checked out their Facebook....lots of pictures. Needless to say we were not disappointed. I am extremely hard to please I cooked in and ran restaurants half my life. And my wife is right up there with me as far as quality of food and flavor profiles. This place has some amazing smoked meats for selection in their entrees. I tried a bit of everything with every kind of meat and style. Ordered myself a combo with a taco, burrito, enchilada and beans and rice, was amazing.....enchiladas are the best around. The tried a tamale, which was great, authentic. Followed up by a Jumbo with three meats, which half had to come home for later. I was very impressed with all of it as the wife was with her order. The service was spectacular, met the owner who brought us meat samples to try before we ordered. These were offered, did not have to ask. He has a very friendly up beat personality, along with his daughter who was our server whom is also made us feel at home. Great conversation, and service, awesome food. The place is small, but not in a bad way, very cozy and colorful.....vibrant, atmosphere is perfect. Same family that owned and ran ponchos in marysville for years, they have the original offerings from there plus a new twist, smoked meats also which are phenomenal, and street style as well as standard food. We will be back that is for sure. I have to say it was definitely one of our best dining experiences in a long time, especially in the local area. I will be adding this to our list of regular restaurants that we rotate thru. I highly recommend them to anyone looking for a local...

I am being 100% fair and honest and this review is in good faith:

I have never been to a restaurant as dirty as this one. My shoes almost stayed with the floor walking on it. You can see a trail of filth in high traffic areas because there is obviously no cleaning done at all.

I walked in and I was the only person there. Stood at the door waiting to be greeted but host or whoever she was stood at counter on her phone. I wish that was my only complaint.

The menu is pieces of printer paper held in three ring binder plastic sleeves held together by bread ties. The menu is written all over with items crossed out and all the prices increased by scribbling out and writing bigger number next to it. Apparently they can’t afford to print on a new price of plain white paper and stick it in the sleeve. This critique wouldn’t matter much to me if everything else was awesome so take it how you want.

The only thing they really have to do right is the food. The food is really cheap and somehow extremely overpriced. I don’t know if you have ever been to Red Pepper around here but the food is equivalent to that but if Red Pepper just gave up completely and served slop. The place should be called Gordon’s Food Service Mexican Restaurant

If you like cheap food and have no standards and don’t mind complete filth every where you turn. You might like it.

Edit: Also, all the five star reviews have me completely perplexed and is HIGHLY suspect. It’s the most obvious 1 star restaurant I have...

As an actual Mexican American person I decided to give this place a try so I ordered the tamale dinner meal....the tamales weren't authentic that's for sure..I could tell the beans that came with it were canned. The tamales looked good on the outside but once I opened on and tasted it....it was dry, it didn't have the sauce inside either. The rice was decent but definitely do not recommend the tamale dinner. The service is friendly, I would give the atmosphere a 5 star if they played actual Mexican music like how an actual authentic Mexican restaurant would do. I just think the owner should put more effort into doing research on making better tamales. Otherwise I'm just assuming that a white person is just profiting off of my culture, which from what I seen is more likely the case here. Don't open restaurants if that culture doesn't belong to you period. Also actual Mexican restaurants have more variety than just nachos, burritos and tacos. So this is straight up disrespectful. So if you're going to profit off of my culture at least...