Catrina Fresh Mex — Restaurant in Tulsa

I originally travelled 25 miles from home to hit a competitor down the street for some legit tacos at 830pm on a Saturday night. I was expecting a line but it was crazy, so when I saw this down the street I remembered trying them months ago and figured a 2nd try was in order.

Ordered the Chicken Quesadilla & 2 Steak Street Tacos with everything on them.

The tacos were well topped and overflowing with extra steak, good for a few bites with a fork later, a little on the heavy side on the onions but not too bad, and the flavor was spot on with the first bite as-is. Follow up bites had squeezed lime juice (several wedges in the box) and some of their hot sauce. Very happy with this part of the meal.

Quesadilla was around $10 so I was a little nervous about being disappointed for the buck, but they proved to be well stuffed with chicken and cheese with a PERFECT grilled tortilla. The last piece and of course the one I planned on taking a pic of was a little naked toward the tip, but the other pieces more than made up for it. They included a side of sour cream in a squeezy tube which was a nice surprise and combined with the hot sauce worked well.

Food quality was 100%, no fatty chunks or odd bites. Everything was delicious. Even my fountain Pepsi tasted correct.

My only complaint, and it’s a very small one, is I was hoping with them being a smaller / local chain that the hot sauce would be fresh made like many other places, more like a hot salsa maybe. But it was in unmarked packets that looked like duck sauce and were less hot than Diablo (Taco Bell) or El Scorcho (Del Taco).

Please forgive the pics, I don’t typically eat in solo or do it towards end of business out of respect for the crew, so dome lighting in my Suburban will have to suffice.

Exterior was clean and the interior through the windows looked bright, clean, and welcoming. The young lady in the drive through was very friendly as well.

While I may not be back to this location as there are closer ones to my home, I can 100%...

Love this place. They're new and I can tell that they may still be working out some of the kinks - but do yourself a favor and stop in. We've made it a weekend stop for the past 3 weeks running. Everything we've had thus far has been delicious. The burritos are HUGE (we had the California burrito) so if you're dining as a couple, it's big enough to split. That said, though, there are a lot of menu items worth trying. The Birria Tacos have probably been the richest, most flavorful item we've sampled so far and certainly earn my recommendation as well.

Additionally, Catrina offers a well-priced street taco combo lunch, breakfast all day, and a new menu item that has me intrigued - a Birria Torta. Looking forward to coming back (I'll grab some photos next time).

Catrina also has a salsa bar with several different options including salsa that is actually SPICY. The only critique I would offer at this point is, maybe, offer chips with which to sample the salsas while one waits for their order. Also, and it may be where we were sitting, the music was quite loud and made it difficult to talk. Even still, glad to see this place occupying this space and look forward to continuing my...

Three strikes in one meal. The food was tasty and fresh, which is the bare minimum for any restaurant on a Saturday night. For us, the overall execution fell short.

We ordered two bags of chips and only received one until we asked. The staff was very friendly though.

We paid extra for lettuce and tomato on our birria tacos, but those toppings were missing.

The chips had a strong fryer oil taste, and one bag was stale. It tasted like either too many chips were fried at once or they sat under a heat lamp too long.

Also, there were two things just to share: the consommé tasted like it was made from a stock base rather than from scratch — not a dealbreaker, but worth noting since nearby taco trucks do make theirs from scratch. The nachos came DIY style- with all of the ingredients In separate containers. Again, not a dealbreaker, but something unexpected.

That said, the food had decent flavor, the torta was especially good. It just seemed poorly executed during our visit. I do plan to give them another shot to try the breakfast menu. Hopefully that experience lines up better with the...