Ocho Café - Westford MA — Restaurant in Westford

I'm only leaving this review because I can't stop thinking about the meal I had. This place forever changed my standards for Mexican food.

I went to lunch with a coworker of mine; it was a Friday and we couldn't decide what we wanted. Honestly, we were going to go across the street for sushi, but you know how sushi gets...it's expensive sometimes. We decided on this place on a whim because we were already on the way to Westford. We were kind of nervous because it was a new place, but we were at least going to stop in and cross it off forever from the list of "places to visit for a good meal".

The exact opposite happened. This restaurant was forever cemented in my mind as the greatest Mexican I've had in New England, and potentially even in the entire United States. It was a slow afternoon after the holidays, so we got seated immediately and started reading the menu.

The menu had zero misses. The prices were in line with what you'd expect nowadays, but they were pretty reasonable (about 17-21 for entrees) and everything looked amazing. We were pretty overwhelmed, because we were expecting only one or two decent things on the menu. Before we could even begin to decide, our waitress took our drink order and served us chips and salsa. Incredible salsa. Maybe it was the weather, or the stars aligned just right, but it was dancing on every taste bud.

At this point, my coworker and I had stopped complaining about work just to keep eating the chips and salsa and admire the place. We didnt get a margarita cause we still had to go back to work, but they looked awesome, both on the menu and on other people's tables. Also, the nachos that other people got at the bar looked insane, stacked with meat, cheese, salsa and sour cream. The waitress returned, and I ended up ordering an appetizer literally just to stall for time. We had no clue how to narrow it down from the five different things we each wanted.

I got something that I couldn't find on the online menu (Flautas de pollo maybe?) and I swear, the chefs predicted the future because that app was out within less than 3 minutes, loaded with veggies and sour cream. The app was pretty mind blowing. Again, maybe I was just hungry but I was loving every bite more than usual. The guacamole was also some of the most flavorful guacamole ive ever had. I don't know if they added a lot more citrus to it, or what, but I walked away thinking other mexican restaurants had been scamming me out of this guacamole of the gods.

We finally decided on entrees with the help of our waitress -- I got a pepper jack enchilada. Yet again, these chefs had my food sent through the time machine to my table in what seemed like 5 minutes. Normally you'd think Chef Microwave prepared my meal, but with the amount of care my plate was prepped with, there was just no way. That enchilada was the best I've ever had. I'm used to it being covered and stuffed with sauces and additional ingredients, which I love, but it was simply some chicken in a tortilla with some pico de gallo on top and rice and black beans on the side. I am doing it a disservice by saying "simply"; the flavors left nothing to be desired, and the portion was just right. I wouldn't have taken home leftovers if I hadn't filled up on chips and salsa.

I have thought about this meal for days now. I can't promise you will have the same experience I did, but if you give it a try, you'll definitely see me there again ordering one of everything...

When my family moved from Texas to Massachusetts, we braced ourselves for a dramatic decrease in quality and availability of Tex-Mex. However, one eventually gets desperate for a tiny taste of that cheesy, bean-y goodness, and thus, like a man out of prison I found myself on the doorstep of Ocho. The decor was admittedly nice, if extremely cliche, and they quickly seated my son and I, providing us with some chips and ketchup. But hey, lots of places have bad salsa. Then we ordered some queso. Just in time, I realized they planned to "garnish" it with a handful of cilantro and tomatoes. That's... bizarre, but we had them leave it off, leaving us with something decidedly okay. My son gave it a 6 out of 10. This was, unfortunately, the absolute high point. For those of you looking for Ocho's patented frozen margarita recipe, I can give it to you here:

1. Make an extremely mediocre margarita on the rocks
2. Dump the entire thing in a blender
3. Do nothing else Let's put this in perspective: Your little son, Billy, hasn't had an ice cream cone in 8 months. He's literally dancing with delight as you take him to the ice cream shop. They proceed to dump heavy cream and cubes of ice in a blender and serve it to him with some chocolate drizzle and a dried up cherry. Does Billy cry? You're darn right I do, because it's a fundamentally different substance! *The author notes that as the "meal" progressed, the "frozen margarita" separated and became more of a margarita latte, with foamy ice at the top. Don't worry, the chunks were still large enough to clog a straw and choke on.

Alas, we digress. The food, you ask? Well, I ordered the staple of Tex-Mex: Fajitas. What came out was thin strips of beef and chicken in some sort of gooey red sauce. If you had presented me this dish, without any context, and asked me where it was from, I can honestly say I would have guessed Chinese food. It was accompanied by terrible rice, terrible beans, a tablespoon of cheese, some iceberg lettuce, and some type of guacamole whose sole ingredient appeared to be lime juice. I must apologize that I lacked the wherewithal to take a picture of my son's face when he tried it, because his idyllic confusion would have sufficed for this review and saved me a bit of carpal tunnel.

Across the table, my son ordered a simple bean and cheese burrito... except that it was an enchilada (I'm not being picky here -- Taco Bell can get this right, so I expect Ocho should as well). After summarily complaining that the refried beans were worse than the brand of canned beans we microwave at home, he dissected his burrito-lada to discover it contained no beans and no cheese. There was, however, some sort of strange yellow goo. I will concede it might at one point have been a bean/cheese hybrid, but had long since perished at the cruel hands of watery tortilla runoff. I was engaging in a futile attempt to fish bits of ruptured, stale tortilla out of my plate of General Gao's Two Flavor Fajita Surprise when he looked at me with big, watery eyes and said, "Daddy, I'm hungry. Can we...

I was excited to try this place because I was curious but I sat down at the bar and I saw the biggest ants I've ever seen and it honestly made me sick to my stomach. Took too long to be given a menu. Some drink Menu title names were in Spanish so I didn't know what I was getting or looking at, which didn't make me feel stupid I was just annoyed because apparently I got a drink with no liquor in it and didn't realize it, yet somehow the drink was still over 10$. After staring at Ants crawling in front of and drinking my overpriced fruit juice my food came, the food (not the drink) didn't take too long to make actually so that was good. I ordered the "World best tacos" which contained no taco seasoning and very specifically 3 steak strips laid on top of a pile of red onions, cabbage? And store bought pre-cut tomatoes. Those three ingredients made up like 90% of the tacos. For the side it was rice and beans for some reason? No mention of the option to add sour cream or guacamole. Tacos were overall tasteless. I'm sure they're trying to emulate a traditional taco but they atleast could've added more flavor to the meat and less...red onions? Which I've never had on tacos, piled on no less. Mexican Chili in Chelmsford has better tacos at a cheaper price, it may not have drinks but they're right next to a liquor store at least lol.

Overall eating tasteless food while continuously needing to flick away ants with a straw honestly made me feel stick to my stomach. I was so excited to pay for my food and leave. The whole vibe of the place just made me feel like I was in abuelas basement with the bad decorations and the overall stuffy atmosphere and seeing the glow of 10 ants bodies flickering 3 inches away from my food. It was disgusting...