La Vecindad Neighborhood TACOS — Restaurant in San Diego

Make no mistake about it. This is a Bar, that serves taco’s, not a Taco bar or restaurant.

Don’t be fooled by the $$$, it’s not Italian Food in Del Mar sort of pricing, but it’s more specific to the value. San Diegans are too used to $1 tacos or Taco Tuesdays that we’ve lost some appreciation for some aspects (like how most Taco places have mediocre salsas). I certainly don’t think this fits in the $$$ range, but you certainly not on that ERTOS pricing either. When you see the décor you will certainly be surprised that a place with such a relaxed atmosphere could cost so much. It’s bright and colorful, more Folklorico than Art Deco with a slight emphasis on eating rather than dining. The disposable utensils and paper plates certainly lead you to change your consideration of what type of place this is. I found the bathroom to be bland and fully expected a continuation from the rest of the place.

They are newer and just coming into their own as far as service goes, the owners are friendly and welcoming, but your best bet is to sit at the bar where the bar staff is a little more attentive because like I said earlier, it’s a bar that serves tacos.

The blacken Fish taco is $4 and a few things to consider. it’s basically a salad in a tortilla. Where is the fish, mine was about the size of my thumb. Well cooked, but under seasoned (the blend and amount). Didn’t need the mango, but loved the sauce. Certainly not trying to emulate an Ensenada style. $2 for 5 more standard tacos like Pastor, Asada again killing me on the value smalls. They may look right with all the proper toppings and ingredients, but to me the pastor is lacking the finish. Mango salsa needs heat and it too acidic, but when eaten plain isn’t balanced. I’m a verde guy myself because it goes better with most things so I ended up eating half my food with it. The asada is juicy, great chunks and perfect seasoning, but to me lacked the soft texture of skirt. Verde has got nice acidity and flavor and consistency. Not too chunky. Why is that when you label a place Mexican everyone tries to rate it by it’s “Authenticity”. It’s such an overused word like Fusion, Hipster and Love. Solid Tacos for our American wallets and stomachs. Is it me or is Pozole mainstream now, I mean I saw it at Souplantation the other day. Relax, you know I didn’t try it there, but look forward to coming back on the weekend to try it here.

Onto the real face in the mirror, the drinks. It’s in Hillcrest so you know they have mastered the margaritas. I do love how they don’t sacrifice proportions for size as 90% of all margaritas made by most places do it all wrong. I’m not a margarita guy, but I enjoyed mine. Their bar is actually kind of sparse and though they are showcasing quite a few spirits I found them to be very basic and certainly not on the level of say Mayahuel, Old Town or even Pony Room for Tequila. Not a single Bacanora, Sotol either.

Hopefully they can refine their dishes and infuse some class into the experience and up their...

😢 we were really looking forward to this place since it had good reviews. The downside is that right now I guess bc it's Halloween monththere were several grotesque displays in the store next to the restaurant. Eventhough there was parking right Infront of the restaurant, the horrible looking display that looked out of a horror movie, discouraged us from parking right Infront of the restaurant. So we looked for parking down the street to still give the restaurant a try. We payed four hrs of parking which is what the parking meter charged our card. So we get to the restaurant and the inside of the restaurant is full of scary halloween decorations 🤦🏻‍♀️. Huge scary death statue Nd other creepy hanging decorations. Why does all of this matters? Because we had small children with us, ages 4-9 and two of them started crying when they walked inside the restaurant n were scared off by the decorations. I respect others beliefs and if they feel comfortable celebrating a day for the demons and the devil that's up to them. But I feel that a family restaurant should respect families with small children n think of the customers before they put displays like those. Specially knowing kids get nightmares and can end up traumatized. I cut my images to try to not show all those horrible decorations. But I wanted to leave this review to say how disappointed we were to not even get a chance to eat and this place lost customers due to it's creepy...

Last night I was looking for a restaurant for Taco Tuesday with a higher rating. La Vecindad has a 4.7, with more than 500 people rating it, I was looking forward to tonight. Friends and I entered to very friendly people, the decor is fun, the atmosphere is perfect for a Taco Tuesday. It's a taco place and it's a taco day, so we ordered tacos, every taco they make including vegetarian, and a shrimp cocktail. The shrimp cocktail was average, as my friend said it's nothing to write home about. The vegetarian tacos were good but not fantastic, the meat tacos are not good. One of my friends only eats meat, he's been like this as long as I've known him (45 years). We both have a healthy appetite, and he couldn't finish his first order of 4 tacos, he only ate 2 of them, I was able to eat 3, but only because I used a bunch of salsa. The problems we had was flavor, the El Pastor had no spice, it's like they made it for tourists or old people, the carni asada again no flavor, I had one with sausage, I couldn't taste the sausage. The problem all the meats had was they weren't fresh. All the meats were dry, and flavorless, like they were precooked and heated up. If you don't care to cook fresh food, cover it up with fantastic drinks, they didn't. We don't...