EL CAPITAN MEXICAN GRILL & BAR — Restaurant in Simi Valley

My family and I have been dying to find somewhere new to eat in Simi Valley so we thought we would give this place a try. Did a take out order of tostada salad with steak, paella, and four kids meals three of which were bean and cheese burritos and one was a taco. The total of my order was $82 and some change.

First, the good part of our experience - the food was fresh and hot.

Now the rest, first of all this was the most bland food I have ever eaten in my life. How you can make paella and it not even taste like seafood is beyond me. To best describe this, I want you to think of ordering paella from the Simi Valley hospital while you're an inpatient and you're on a cardiac dietary restriction where you're not allowed to have salt or anything else because of blood pressure. Yep, that's it. Now imagine paying $22 for that bland food

The tostada salad was the driest most plain salad my wife had ever consumed and all of the vegetables that weren't lettuce were cut so small that it was basically a taco shell full of lettuce with a sprinkle of some color. The stink that was on the tostada salad wasn't even seasoned it was basically a sliced piece of unflavored steak dropped on top. This wasn't an amazing $19 meal.

It's pretty hard to mess up kids meals, but I expected a lot more for $10 considering all I got was a 4-in burrito, a spoon of rice, and a spoon of beans in a to-go container.

All in all, this is a typical Simi Valley restaurant with poor food and high prices. I don't plan on eating here again anytime soon, but that probably doesn't matter because like most places in this town it will be out of business in 6 months and everybody will say, "wonder why they went out of business?". Well, when that happens, please refer back to this post and know that you can pretty much set your own price for good food but if you can't even put salt on things you have a...

So, this is hopefully a brief update to my past stellar reviews.

We recently ordered the family pack special, which went up a few dollars and now does that include the churos. If that wasn’t bad enough, the order of beans and spanish rice was about half of what it has been on all our past orders. Not good items to cut corners on.

I don’t want to stop ordering this great special, as it is a go-to dinner for us, but it needs to stay special.

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This evening we decided to order in from a local Mexican restaurant, El Capitan, as they were promoting this special feast deal. It includes a huge delicious salad, a giant bag of tortillas chips, two tubs of a tasty & hot green and red salsas, four green enchiladas, four red enchiladas, four carnitas tacos, a boatload of Spanish rice, and very excellent traditional refried beans. All this for just $35. Incredibly yummy at a fantastic value!! They also had everything ready for pickup in less than 15 minutes. If you eat there they have a cool Mexican-style fun...

Some lady friends and I came for dinner last week and I was disappointed. Most of the menu items are very highly priced like $18 for a single tamale and rice and beans and many items around $25. For these prices you'd expect delicious high quality food. It was mediocre. We get better food at Mission Burrito, Taqueria El Maizal, or El Pollo Corona for a fraction of the price. They are of course more casual but even this place that is supposed to be more fancy isn't that nice looking. The waiter was very nice I'll give it that. The semi enclosed patio was hardly decorated at all. The lighting was bright white, felt a bit like we were eating in a Costco. The ladies liked their alcoholic drinks and they were pretty to look at. My cheese enchilada was okay and the rice and beans were okay. For that flavor level I could've made that at home for $3 instead of $17 after tax and tip (and I only had water to drink) I'd say don't...