El Jacal Mexican Grill — Restaurant in San Francisco

I am so surprised with this restaurant.

First or foremost, the food is fantastic. We started with Horchata, fresh OJ, and an Acaí bowl (amazing). Then we had a chicken asada, and a Mexican fusion breakfast (also wonderful).

What really blows me away isn't that a restaurant can successfully blend American foods and Acaí bowls with traditional Mexican foods (which is quite a feat).

But more than this I was surprised that I had lived right next to Cortland street for 3-4 years and had never known this restaurant was here.

Sitting next to the window I watch as a father with his son walked right to the window, curious what kind of restaurant it was he stepped back to look at the name, and then uncertain of what kind of establishment this was continued to walk on.

I believe that the outside of this restaurant doesn't express the wonderful selection of food inside.

I'm believe that 70% of potential clientele that walk by here daily would love this restaurant if only they knew what was inside. And I hope that Mix Traditions finds a way...

We stopped in for a quick lunch and had a great experience. The service is very friendly, the nice teenager who took our order and brought our food checked in on us multiple times. When the food came out, it was presented very well (no sloppy looking dishes). My veggie burrito was delicious, with every ingredient tasting incredibly fresh. Same with the complimentary salsas that came with the chips. My daughter's quesadilla and fries were generous portions and she ate until she was very full. The standout in terms of the food are the fresh ingredients. If you look through their photos on Yelp, you never see any brown avocado (or any brown veggies for that matter) and all the food looks immaculately presented, a clear sense of pride shining through from this nice homestyle restaurant. These are the types of places you want to see to see do well, look forward to trying more of their...

My fiance and I both had burritos from this place and got extremely sick. Luckily for me, I only ate half of my burrito. I threw up once, felt a bit off the next morning, and then was fine. Unfortunately for my fiance, he ate all of his and was throwing up all night and the next day and had a terrible fever for a couple of days after. It ruined our whole weekend.

Edit: it was absolutely the burritos. This was the only meal my fiance and I had in common that day. We met up with friends later, who had something else for dinner, and they were fine. I got chicken, he got beef, so it wasn't the meat. I think I recall the sour cream tasting kind of strong, so it was probably that. Just because others didn't report getting sick doesn't mean it was not because of this place. Please, take the...