Casa Vallarta Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Town of Ulster

I will start by saying I have not been in a Mexican restaurant since I was a kid. I was just never a fan. But, I went out for a drive with a friend and gave her the choice on where she wanted to eat dinner. She chose this place. And boy was I very pleasantly surprised. We started off with drinks. I had a non alcoholic mango margarita and she had some kind of other mango drink. They were absolutely amazing. The inside of this place reminded me of the hotels and restaurants I went to in Cancun when I was younger. It was an actual work of art. She had a 3 entrée meal with tacos, enchiladas, and something else I don't remember. I had the birria tacos. I had heard so much about them from Guga Food, and Birria Bombs on TikTok that I had to try them. When I say the food was 100% I mean it. We started with a bowl of chips with salsa and a refried bean dip with cheese on top. The bean dip was right on, the salsa a little spicy for me....I'm old what can I say. The main courses came with refried beans and rice on the side. That were both actually very tasty and were gone off both our plates within seconds. The birria tacos were soft yet crunchy, amazing spice that was not too hot and the consume was so good I could have drank a large glass of it. All she did was rave at how good her tacos and enchiladas were. She said she had never had Mexican food before that was this good. The service was top notch with the servers not coming too often but, alwaus being attentive when needed. If there was one negative I could say about the place was that there was some trash on the floors around our table one piece being a silverware wrap in the middle of the isle that about 10 different servers and restaurant staff just walked over and never took the second to pick it up. Believe it or not those things do make an impression and me having a history in QSR management it stood out even more. Overall great job! We both will definitely be back. I give...

I grabbed take out for my first try. It was a slow time on a slow day. I was a little disappointed with the way their menu is set up for tacos and combos but they were accommodating when I asked about doing 3 different (available options) proteins for the 3 tacos. I wish this was an automatic option on all of the dishes that have multiples of things (ie would be nice if combos were not automatically be all the same protein either). I also wished that I could order individual tacos and mix and match types. I got fajita tacos for my boyfriend (one of each protein) and pork tacos for myself. I really didn't care for the way the pork was cooked (watery, overcooked, and large chunks that felt too big for a taco and to soak up any seasoning - got stuck in my teeth so much that I only ate one of three), or the seasoning (very bland, especially for Mexican), but I had 3 of them on my plate that I paid a bit for. I traded one of mine for my boyfriend's chicken fajita taco. The chicken was excellent and well seasoned. The rice and beans were decent. My boyfriend said the pork taco he had from my plate was more than half fat - I'd have rather had that than the one I ate. He ate the last one later that night and said that one was like the one I had - bland, watery, overcooked and stuck in his teeth.

I will give it another try but I won't be trying the pork anything again.

I'm not rating the atmosphere because it was take out and even though I was there, it was absolutely dead in there at the time and day I went so it isn't fair to assess.

I was expecting it to taste a little more authentic, but I will give it...

It's okay because the portions are big and all the appetizers are very tasty! greasy spicy salty! However, I found all the entrees, burritos, tacos, chicken dishes the rice, all of the main dinners i have tried are bland and need seasoning and heat really bad. I had to grab hot sauce for the rice. Chipotle chicken was not Chipotle at all actually there was no degree of heat in the dish whatsoever so it's not like it was some sort of spicy chicken but just not Chipotle, no, it was worse it just was not a spicy dish to begin with. I at least expected to say to myself that this may be someone's interpretation of Chipotle but it would have to be spicy for that concept to hold as an excuse but this was just simply incorrect; chicken with an abundance of sloppy flavorless sauce! Oh yeah that's another thing, because so much sauce and sloppy things are served, a spoon at the table would have made a lot of sense. You pretty much can't order anything that doesn't need a spoon actually but someone decided spoons wouldn't be a thing there I guess? But I would come back here to order each and every appetizer; and nothing else on the main menu. And there's nothing wrong with having all the appetizers for dinner, as this happens to be true of a lot of restaurants I find the appetizers to be impressive and everything...