SoCal Cantina — Restaurant in Tuscaloosa

I went to SoCal last night with my girlfriend and I had high hopes because I had gone in for a drink one day and it was delicious. Well, I was severely let down. We were seated and had no time to look at the menu before being offered an appetizer to which we briefly looked and saw queso listed for $3.50 so we agreed (I will get back to this). The chips were fresh, but covered in seasoning that we had to tap off before dipping in the queso, which seemed to be a yellow cheddar nacho cheese sauce & not the traditional white queso you get elsewhere. The menu doesn’t have much in my opinion so I opted for 3 tacos; the surf taco with no lettuce, the LA taco, & the Long Beach, all on corn tortillas. My girlfriend got the crunchwrap, no sour cream & added steak instead of ground beef with a side of rice. The tacos were presented on a plate…flat…like no kind of restaurant presentation, but whatever that wasn’t a big deal to me because I’m not a fancy girl as long as the food and the price match. For $17.50 I got 3 tacos with no sides. Ummm that seems off, but again whatever. The Long Beach taco was really good, the flavors complimented one another very well and the amount of meat on the taco was great. The surf taco had one small singular piece of fried fish and pickled purple cabbage only, this one was mediocre. The LA taco is where I drew the line because there was hardly any meat. Now to the Crunchwrap, they got the order wrong and added sour cream the first time so we sent it back. The new one arrived with an abundance of black beans and a speckle of steak inside. The side of rice is NOT Spanish rice so please do not be fooled. We decided to box everything up and head home due to the disappointment. Once the check arrived we were confused about the $14 charge for queso (remember I said it was $3.50). We consulted with the server who flipped the menu over to show us that the appetizer is $14 & the side was $3.50, nobody told us that, but whatever yet again. All in all, the food was subpar, the service was subpar, the atmosphere was subpar. If you’re looking for a place to get a good drink during happy hour, then I would say this is a good spot, other than that you’re getting an overpriced and mediocre take on Mexican food. There are better Mexican places in the...

We were traveling and decided to try this place. We were there about an hour and a half before closing time so they weren't super busy. We both ordered taco plates. The service started out slow and it didn't get any better. The waitress took our drink order. It took forever to get them and she didn't bring straws. Then it took forever to get those. Placed our order and it was an unreasonable amount of time to wait. I think the waitress checked on us once for drinks...they had been sitting there empty. Finally, our food arrived (approximately 50 minutes after ordering) and it was ice COLD. We had ordered two tacos but they prepared it as a taco plate with rice and beans. The beans were scaled over and looked like a small cow pie that had been sitting for a while and ran over. The rice was ice cold. Both were tiny portions. Those weren't as big a deal as the tacos. Tacos were Ice ice cold too. Once of the tacos was a California taco and had fries on it...yep...ice cold. It was so bad, I said something to the waitress. Her response, it can't be, they made it fresh. So, we ate ice cold tacos. Didn't touch the beans or rice and left one of the tacos because couldn't do the chicken taco cold. We were never offered a solution and when the waitress came to bring the bill was the only somewhat of an apology we received. She said they had all new staff in the kitchen and she was sorry it took so long. CLUELESS. Yes, it took a lifetime. That was bad enough but we never complained about that. We complained about the temperature of the food. We left unhappy and won't be back next time we travel through. It was the least busy restaurant down there at the time and maybe we should have taken that as a sign. Service was AWFUL. Food was Cold. Customer Service didn't exist. We were sorry we stopped...

Way too expensive for a pretty disappointing dinner. I'm sure the taco's are the better option here but no amount of fancy toppings and meats makes paying 6-7 dollars for a single street style sized taco worth it for me. I went with the burrito cause it looked good on the menu description. But when I got it, it was pretty much all rice and beans. Barely any of the chicken that I paid an extra 5 dollars for. Or any of the other toppings it described on the listing for that matter. On top of that, the construction of the the burrito was lacking at best.. Ingredients weren't dispersed well and for half the burrito I was biting into 90% rice. On top of that this burrito and fries cost around 20 bucks. It was mediocre at best. But where credit is due the fries are pretty great. And the guac is probably some of the best I've ever had. My brother normally hates guacamole but even he liked their version. If not for those the food would have gotten 1 star from me. I didn't have any cocktails so nothing to say about that. Staff was very friendly though and though they did get a couple of things wrong with our order they were quick to correct them and took them off the charge to make up for it. Still the main reason you come to a restaurant is for the food. And for what you're paying for (sides and appetizers aside) you just aren't getting your money's worth. Either in quality,...