Rosalita's Cantina Sanibel — Restaurant in Sanibel

We were visiting Sanibel Island from out of town and chose Rosalita's based on all of the great reviews. We ate there on 6/12/24 a little after 5pm. The atmosphere is great and our server was wonderful. The chips and salsa were delicious - I loved the cilantro in the salsa. The rest of the food LOOKED great too. However, it was one of the worst Tex-Mex we ever tasted. It seemed like the cook forgot to season the meat! My mother ordered 3 beef soft tacos, my husband ordered a beef burrito, I ordered enchiladas made with barbacoa beef, and my father ordered quesadillas with carne asada. With the manager's permission (according to our server), our server ended up comping my mother's meal off the ticket because it was so bland she didn't eat any of it after two bites. However, the manager never came by our table to offer any apologies or ask us any questions. My dad ended up sharing his quesadilla with my mother (his was the only meal that tasted kind of okay). My enchiladas were very bland so I only ate one of them and left the rest. The rice and refried beans were not great. My husband's burrito was also very bland, although he ate the whole thing because he said he was starving. (As a side note, we did not penalize our waitress - she was great.) The worst part about it all was that my husband ended up getting sick about an hour and a half after eating his meal. He was up all night throwing up and with diarrhea, bloating, and with stomach pains. I thought I would have to take him to the urgent care or emergency room if he wasn't better by the next morning. However by the next day, he started to feel a little better, although he got very little sleep (if any) that night because he was suffering from the stomach ailment - he definitely feels it was the burrito that he ate. It wouldn't hurt Management to check into what's going on in that kitchen. We really wanted to like Rosalita's, but our experience made it impossible to give it more than a two-star rating, and that's being generous. Our server gets five stars though - she was great from...

A generous 3 stars for this joint. It was not busy when I entered at 12:30 pm on a Monday. I was greeted and seated promptly. Free chips and salsa, and the chips were warm, which was nice. Water was from the tap and if you aren’t from this area you’ll pick up on the fact that it’s not filtered because it smells like, and tastes like, the matchstick sulphuric thing that all the water coming out of faucets on this island smells like. I wasn’t that thirsty. The decor was, I suppose, appropriate but dated. Weird spikey blown glass lights that I observed were probably hard to clean because they were filmy and dusty. I ordered a house margarita and the shrimp tacos. The shrimp were bland- no seasoning. Plain cabbage and too much cheese (seafood and cheese is weird to me) and it came with three tiny lime chunks (not full wedges) and two sauces, a green tomatillo and avocado sauce with cilantro that was spicy, and a mango sauce which was also spicy. 9 shrimp (not freshly cooked) for 3 tacos, buried under cheese and plain dry cabbage. Without these sauces the tacos would have tasted like cardboard. I expected with the rating on Google there’d be some sort of culinary elevation for the price, but nah, they apparently seem to think they can survive based on location and desperate non-risk taking tourists. Showcase the seafood in your tacos- it’s the gulf FFS. Season them, and season your cabbage- make a slaw- get some texture and acidity going. Server- however attentive and polite- brought me the wrong table’s bill- there were three tables occupied in the whole place and I was the only person dining alone so I’m not sure how that one got confused. Oh well, plenty of other restaurants to go to. Maybe I’m biased because I’m in...

Today was probably my third visit to this place. We came promptly at 11 for lunch. We've also came in on Sunday for brunch which was perfection! Everything we've had so far has been great! The cornbread, rice, and beans that come with the lunch special are fantastic. I love the fact that they have tinga chicken on the menu. It's a thing that's hard to find! The cheese dip (Chile con queso) is way better than cheese dip at most places. The brunch chicken and waffles comes with a pimento cheese and some kind of avocado sauce that is amazing! The cornbread waffle and if you take the syrup and drizzle it over the chicken it makes my favorite chicken and waffles I've probably ever had. The lunch special tamales, specifically the Yucatan chicken is pretty good. I love probably everything we've ordered that hasn't wound up with cilantro. The drinks by the way taste absolutely amazing! We got a frozen margarita once and it went down like water. I don't know where mine disappeared to! Heather is a great server that we ask for each visit now and we've also gotten the gentleman who's name I never caught once(today) I hope no one takes offense to this but he looks like a maybe Cuban Tony Stark. He's very fast!

The one "ick" I have with the place is that they do not disclose which items on the menu have cilantro in them. Cilantro is an allergy which effects around 8-13% of the population. Many people who are allergic just think they "don't like" Mexican food because it's too hard to find the tiny leaves and isolate that as the part you don't like. The chipotle chicken tamale had a soap taste along with the starter salsa. I asked about the guacamole and yes that has it...