Chalateco — Restaurant in San Jose

The Salvadorian Rice 🍚 and beans 🫘 were on point! 😋 & that usually tells you a lot. I've grown up with homemade Mexican and Salvadorian rice 🍚.

The Quesadillas Gus is one of my favorite items off the menu so far!

Enchiladas were delicious, tried the 3 different types, and all were acceptable 😋 mole had a kick (spicy) to it even with the complex taste of it being on the sweet side, mmmm 😋. Red sauce was definitely the spiciest. Green was on the milder side.

Service from this place was very friendly, appreciate the cashier always smiling 😃 and being pleasant. It's always a pleasure walking in and being greeted 🤝.

The location of this place is great for business being on the 2 busy intersections. The lot is somewhat small, but parking seems to be available every time I visit. The restaurant is on the small side but not an issue at all. Love how they have the el Pastor being cooked outside with chicharrones being fried up.

I will say it is a bit on the expensive side 💸 but what isn't nowadays in Silicone Valley🏬, shesh!

The platanos(plantain) 🍌 with crema were below mid(mediocre). I normally love these desserts, but not from this place, were burnt and not the authentic taste and texture i was expecting 😢.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend, my whole family loves when I bring food home for this place. Service was on the faster...

If you're considering eating here, do yourself a favor and look elsewhere. I was going to rate this 2 or 3 stars until someone in my party got debilitating food poisoning, and another person had mild food poisoning after eating here. Blindly tried this place out after noticing it was new in the area. I understand it's new, but wow. Menus didn't have prices, and that's because everything is overpriced in my opinion. They brought chips and salsa which was nice, but the basic round tortilla chips they served (grocery store variety) didn't even fit in the tiny salsa containers, so you had to break the chips to be able to get any salsa. Drinks came in plastic to-go cups with lids. Also there were no napkins at the table, even after we had our chips and drinks which was inconvenient. Food was wildly meh. Shrimp was overcooked, enchiladas were ok but nothing special, and the Cubano had literal chopped up American hotdog in it. Maybe they have some specialty that's good, but there would be no way to know with the massive menu. You would think maybe excellent service would make up for this, but you probably guessed it by now - it wasn't great. Unfortunately adding a pretty flower to the dish doesn't make it worth...

1 star: large menu but when asking if there are vegetarian items (like refried beans or Spanish rice, etc made without meat or at least no pork) got very suspicious/sus responses. Which I can’t eat here again because just don’t lie or have lack of info about that kind of thing. The interior didn’t seem dirty, but it also didn’t seem clean either, which I know sounds weird, but that’s where it’s at. Pretty basic old school 1980s McDonald style interior. Chips and salsa is pretty much Smart & Final large pack restaurant quality items. Very large menu but when clean / clear / safe handling of ingredients is not a thing yet and ingredients honesty is not a thing yet, I can definitely see why there were a few one star reviews talking about food poisoning. Having that many types of animal products plus raw oysters and raw seafood is just complicated in handling, prepping, cooking and storing all those kinds of products correctly. Yup I have a food handlers permit. It would be better to reduce the menu down and be honest about ingredients/ have that info available for...