Oscars Mexican Seafood — Restaurant in San Diego

Oscar's is as great as you've been told, and probably better than you imagine.

This review is for their outpost in Hillcrest, a spotlessly clean location on the corner of 6th and University with conscientious, friendly, and helpful staff. I'll never forget my first time here while I was blissfully scarfing down a pair of battered fish tacos and one of the dudes behind the counter encouraged me to try the homemade sauces in the refrigerator to "bring it to another level." Despite being "fast casual," these are good people who genuinely care about whether or not you're enjoying their food.

The prices for Oscar's outrageously high-quality food are ridiculously low. Yes, you could get some comparable fish tacos from a good San Diego food truck and pay a little less, but this is way easier to deal with. I could eat here every day of the year, not have a problem with it, and spend very little on food.

Each of Oscar's tacos are delicious in their own way, and it is difficult to have to choose between them during each trip to their restaurant. The essential menu items that everyone should try once in their lives are:

Spicy Shrimp Taco - single corn tortilla wrapped around lots of tiny shrimp grilled in a spicy and sweet sauce, with tomatoes, cilantro, a couple of wedges of avocado, and cabbage. This taco does not need additional sauce, it is plenty hot on its own.

Battered Fish Taco - I really like you, Rubio's, but Oscar's battered fish taco destroys yours. Seriously, it doesn't get much better than this scrumptious corn tortilla filled with battered fish, cabbage, tomatoes, red onions, and cilantro, especially when topped with Oscar's homemade chipotle sauce.

Smoked Fish Taco - this taco features super-savory, well-salted fish "sausage" (the fish is ground into a corned beef hash consistency) with cabbage, tomatoes, avocado chunks, and onions. Make no mistake, this is absolutely delicious, and could be my favorite taco from Oscar's depending on my mood. My only complaint is that you barely taste any indication that you're eating fish, but that's not a bad thing.

Where Oscar's further sets themselves apart are with their complimentary homemade sauces available to you in their cooler in squeeze bottles, which include:

Homemade Habanero Aioli - spicy hot and slightly sweet mayo-like sauce - this is a favorite of mine when paired with the Smoked Fish Taco.

Homemade Red Pepper Sauce - earthy and fresh liquefied hot pico de gallo.

Homemade Chipotle Cream Aioli - smoky medium hot sauce that lends itself well to seafood. This pairs well with any of Oscar's seafood tacos.

Oscar's offers refreshing pitchers of aguas fresca (water infused with slices of fruit) free-of-charge on their counter.

If you're visiting the city, this is where you go for seafood tacos, period. If you live here, you...

Wanted to like this place, but somehow our experience was… not-so-great. To start off, parking will likely be difficult, especially when this spot gets busy (which was the case on a random Saturday afternoon). In the shared strip mall, there’s not much of it, and the spaces are tiny. One option is parking farther, closer to Balboa Park, and walking over. The interior is small too (but we managed to squeeze into a table near the front), and there’s also seating outside the front of the restaurant (also potentially packed).

For a group of three, we each got 2-3 tacos and a mixed ceviche to share. Everything took so long — seemed like our order was forgotten for a while. When we finally got our order, we discovered that our tacos were wrong. My friend had ordered a vegetarian soy chorizo taco only to discover that the “soy chorizo” was oddly meat-like… because it in fact had actual beef. When we asked about this, they made an actual soy chorizo taco… which was overly salty (though the flavors were good). I ordered a battered fish taco and additionally a shrimp taco… but there was no shrimp taco, sadly. (We were too tired to ask about the other mixed-up tacos and took what we got.) At least the fish tacos were generously portioned and tasty (the battered texture was great), and I liked the assortment of sauces that were available. Because of the mixup / delay, we discovered that they thrown in some mystery sides - I think a quesadilla and some beans and rice.

Overall, seems like an experience at Oscar’s could be...

This was the worst experience I have had at a restaurant in San Diego so far. We placed our order, the man at the counter read it back correctly, we waited over 20 mins (there were only 4 other people in the restaurant). We ordered two cups of ice water while we waited for our food. He handed us two cups of ice- no water. When I asked for water, he argued and said that's not what we ordered stating we only wanted ice! When we got the water, there was a large brown item in one of the cups, when we showed it to him, he replaced the cup. I became a bit concerned when he took our original cup to the back to show coworkers and they all made an awful face and then laughed. When our food finally arrived, it was completely wrong. No where near close to what we ordered. When I asked the man at the counter, he got quite at attitude and said he hadn't even called our number yet and he hadn't put it together. I told him he had and he had already handed it to us. His response was "well, we're super busy so I can charge you for more food if you want". He showd us the ticket which was pretty close but not exactly what we ordered. Either way, what we received what a mess. The poor lady in front of us was still waiting for her 2 tacos (I'm assuming they were the ones he put on our tray). I cannot believe how inconsiderate and rude he was. His name was Leonidas. If you go, stay clear of him. This was an unnecessarily awful experience. If I could rate it ZERO stars for customer...