Santo Taco — Restaurant in Salt Lake City

(revised because they compromised with me and turned off half of the spotlights)...

it took me a while to go in because it's so bright inside that every time i passed it i thought it was just a surgery room or something. but i'm glad that i eventually got some sunglasses and tried this place out!

i'll start by saying everything i've tried is terrific, but the taco calabasita is my favorite food in downtown salt lake. it's fresh, light, healthy, flavorful and filling if you get 5 of them. they are 2.99 each, but i suggest getting the flour tortilla for an extra $1.00 because the corn tortilla tends to get soggy and break after you get some sauce on it.

the salsa bar is clean, well-stocked and has a good array of saucey salsas but is lacking in pickled veggies. i wish they at least had some pickled carrots and peppers, and although they have what looks like grilled onions, pickled onions would be nice too, if not some cauliflower. also, i think the mild sauce and the habanero sauce were getting a little tangy tonight, but they were still edible.

everything else i've tried on the menu has been stellar. the zucchini burrito was fantastic, the birria taco was extraordinary, especially the consomme. (you don't have to spend the extra $1.00 on flour tortilla; might as well just get the corn tortilla here because it's deep fried and won't get soggy). the mulita nopal is spectacular, only $4.00, and i believe 2 of them would be pretty filling if you got a side of rice or beans for $2.00.

every time i've been here they haven't ever asked me if i'll be dining in (which i do) and they've supplied me with bags, boxes, and paper. the napkin dispensers on the tables are a bit funky and it's hard to grab one napkin at a time, i either get a ripped half-a-napkin, in inch-high stack of napkins, or it has popped open all together and sprung its contents out like a jack in the box. if you need silverware you take a sealed package with three plastic utensils and another napkin in it. everything about the whole experience feels exceptionally wasteful. if you just get a couple of tacos, they come on a square of paper, but if you put salsa on them it can be hard to keep them from dripping off the paper onto the table. a large plate would be nice.

but overall, this place is tasty, and my favorite thing about it is that it's the perfect downtown spot to get full when you're very hungry for under $15.00. unfortunately they are only open until 5:00 pm on sundays BUT! they are open til 3:00 AM thursday, friday, and saturday!!! sadly, they're only open until 9:00 pm monday through wednesday. 11:00 would have been nice, for those who want to go somewhere after a movie, or after one or two drinks at the bar. however, if you walked into this place after being in a dark movie theater or a dimly-lit bar, well, honestly i don't think you would even walk into this place after being in a dimly-lit space. if they exchange the bright, sterile, cold white light for some warmer-toned lighting, i'll switch my...

I honestly must be eating at a different Santo Taco than everyone else, because that was one of the worst tacos I've had in a long time, especially for an award winning place. Santo Taco gets a generous 2/5. I'm always trying to look for everything good in tacos, and I couldn't find it here.

I have heard about the Pastor here for awhile, and when I saw the place I was hopeful because of the trompo spit that I saw. When I got the Pastor Tacos, they didn't cut any off the trompo, they grabbed the meat out of a warmer container that was sitting there, soupy, and not fresh at all. Almost like how a tex-mex takes the meat out of a container and puts it on your salad or burrito. And again, I don't know where people are getting the idea that the tortillas are hand-pressed, they are all commerical bagged tortillas lying all over the restaurant. The meat was so soft, and not because of tenderness, because it just soaked in grease and fat in that container. It was almost chalky. The flavor was honestly barely okay, and I like pineapple on Pastor tacos, but the chunk of pina was almost bigger than the tortilla. Even the drinks were all just commercial fountain Horchata and Jamaica/Hibiscus.

The staff was pretty cool, the salsa bar was great with cilantro, cebolla, salsas, etc. But other than that, I'm sorry I can not go back...

The old team was very efficient, the orders were delivered quickly. The new team is extremely arrogant, they work in a bad mood and the food took a LONG time to be ready, we waited more than 20 minutes. Especially a guy with piercings, tattoos, long black hair who was at the cashier taking the orders, this guy is extremely arrogant and rude, he was visibly stressed and unbalanced, at a certain point he left the restaurant and pushed the doors so hard to open that he scared the customers who were inside. It was a Saturday at 10pm and the restaurant closes at 3am and they were no longer having ranch and some other toppings, when I asked him if they could refill it, he was very rude and told me that they had already run out of everything and only had what was available and that they would not refill anything because they did not have any left, even though there was 5 hours left until the restaurant closed. And the smoke inside the restaurant was very exaggerated. My husband, friends and I are regular customers. We go to the restaurant every week, but after this incident I no longer feel comfortable going back. This was the first time I was treated so badly in a restaurant and it was a horrible experience. The food was very good, but it is not worth...