El Carrito Restaurant — Restaurant in San Diego

A recently re-opened Mexican diner operation with a colorful and important history, El Carrito serves my favorite chilaquiles in Central San Diego County, labeled on their deceivingly eclectic menu as "El Carrito Chilaquiles."

I love that the tortillas in El Carrito's chilaquiles are both crispy and substantial. The dreamy, creamy salsa poblano sauce is lightly touched by cinnamon, and heavily spiced with chilies. Between the addition of jack cheese, sour cream, and fire-roasted corn, you already have a fairly complex dish with lots of powerful flavor elements, but I've also added crumbled chorizo and fried sunny-side up eggs, and everything still works together wonderfully.

The beans served alongside the chilaquiles are also fantastic - they contain puréed corn, bringing a completely different texture and sweetness to beans than what one would be accustomed to in San Diego. This is because the beans are prepared "Guadalajara-style" according to Milo Lorenzana, the friendly gentleman I spoke to who owns El Carrito. This style of beans have been popularized in restaurants in Mexico by a Jaliscan restaurant called "Karne Garibaldi," famous for (among other things) the Guinness world record for "fastest food" ever. The only black mark out of everything I ate here? The home fried potatoes aka "Papas El Carrito" were not great. Not only did they fail to crisp up at all, they seemed entirely unnecessary with everything else on the plate.

Another dish to try here on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday mornings is El Carrito's "Menudo," featuring large chunks of honeycomb tripe and a drinkable seasoned red broth that exercises good restraint with its chilies yet had me sniffling around the half-way point. Fortunately, I also ordered the "Tamarindo-Cucumber Agua Fresca" to help temper the heat, a refreshing drink that was equal parts sweet and sour. My fellow tamarind fans will love this drink.

I still believe that this area of town has nothing on South Bay when it comes to legit Mexican fare, but if any restaurant is capable of beginning to improve the actual culinary stature of Barrio Logan as contrasted against the mind-blowing hyperbole that pervades it, it could...

We live about 2 blocks down and saw the good atmosphere and good pictures so we decided to try it out. We all ended up regretting it. First, the service took a while and they served a larger table next to us even though they had arrived about 16 minutes after us. When we got our food, they had made a few mixups but since it took a while to get our food, we just decided to eat as is. They didn't bring the side of grilled veggies and when I asked about it, they said they had already brought them. Since we were waiting for my niece's pancakes we hadn't started eating at the time so we showed there were no veggies on our table. The lady went to get someone who came back and again told us we had already gotten our order. We showed her the plates and she saw no veggies so brought some out about 15 minutes later.. during this time I also reminded her about the pancake for my niece which had been nearly 40minutes by then and no pancake. Eventually I had to go up to the cashier and again request the pancake. It eventually took them over an hour to get the side of pancake for my 6yo niece even though her order was first and we requested hers be brought out first. We had already finished the food by the time they brought it out. All of us ended up leaving a good amount of food because there was just no taste to it. We really wanted to like the spot and enjoy it but between the terrible service, the lack of flavor and the terrible wait time it just isn't worth it. I don't know who thinks this is good Mexican food. It's really not. Better to cook at home. I was really surprised and disappointed. I've actually recommended people against trying it out. We had a torta ahogada and chilaquiles verdes and chilaquiles divorciados. Not worth the time or price. There are other spots in the area...

Came to this mid spot for a quick breakfast. Not my first choice but it’s convenient for me. The food is just tossed together with no love. I’ve been here a few times and it’s a miss every time. Like I said, it’s convenient. I never had a problem with service before. It’s quick and painless but on this particular day I ordered a “create your own” omelette(boring) and listed it has a variety of 3 peppers. Clearly I can read, and as a chef in the community for 10 years I’m well versed on various ingredients and particularly chili peppers. In order according to the menu, I asked for tomatoes, jalapeños and green bell peppers. The blonde curly haired person at the register proceeded to argue with me a with a teenager attitude trying to shut me up and tell me that I didn’t know the difference between the peppers. “Uuhhh do you want serranos?” I told him I was sure I knew what I ordered and still try to shut me up. There’s a level of respect you should have in that position and I was completely uncomfortable eating here. As I’m typing this I’m taking bites of an unseasoned omelette and some sad, cold potatoes that have probably been sitting in a bowl on a shelf for 20 minutes. A $14 omelette on a paper plate worth it? I wouldn’t have paid $6 for it. Oh well they got me. Lost a...