Richard T.'s Profile

Don't be confused with the truck of the same name. Truck good, this place bad. Tried the asada and pastor tacos. Meat tasted partially re-heated. Quesadilla was just a greasy, soupy mess.

Seafood tostada was an inedible pile of flavorless, cold, canned shrimp and fake lobster meat and rubbery squid chunks, possibly some canned tuna thrown in there. Two bites as a notice of the "C" health rating and straight to the trash can with a "whew, won't make that mistake again."

Great value find in the area. I'm amazed that for the times we've been here, we've always been just about the only people in the place. The food is excellent - had a great breakfast here one time and a wonderful steak dinner most recently.

The filet with Gorgonzola sauce is out of this world, and priced in the mid-$20 range, probably the bargain of my whole Mendocino coast visit.

In Los Angeles, a food spot with this quality of food at these prices would have long waits and packed rooms every night.

I'm impressed. Mike's Auto is in a location that used to house another auto repair business that I had some good experiences with. This week, my 2000 Honda began idling rough with the dreaded "check engine" light flickering on.

I pulled in to ask if I could get a read of the error code, and got his read of both the error and diagnosed the rough idle instantly (seems my aftermarket spark plug wires aren't the bargain they appeared to be).

He spent about 20 minutes on my car cleaning this, checking that and sent me off with a checklist of things to listen for over the next few days and things to think about updating when time and budget permit.

No hard sell, no scare tactics, just good service and advice. I don't know how long he's been at this, but he knows his stuff.

I'll be back as a paying customer soon. Being a new small business in a big town is a tough road, and I certainly want Mike's Auto to survive.

Highly-recommended.

Wow, this is really grandma's-quality Mexican. If your Mexican meals have been mostly chain-based for awhile, this would be a very timely detour to have an "oh, THAT's what that's supposed to taste like" reset.

Even the tortillas, both corn and flour, scream home-made. Salsa, chips, juices, every dish I've tried so far has burst with flavor.

I haven't made it to the breakfast offerings yet, but do plan to.

Wow, I think they cranked up their prices 50% since the last time I was there, and the food seemed to get worse. And the wait times.

Almost nothing noteworthy to the positive in my recent visit. Chips stale, salsa decent. After seeing they're charging about $20 for your basic 2-item Mexican combo, I opted for the carne asada burrito, and my companions got a tostada and an empanada burrito.

Meats and sauces were bland across the table. Food very ordinary, about what you would expect at a chain, but much pricier. Collective opinion was that if they were to shut down the kitchen and just send runners up the street to Poquito Mas for takeout, the food would suddenly get twice as good and could drop about 30% in price and still deliver them a decent margin.

Service was ok and margaritas, which the restaurant leans on heavily for their reputation, were above average.

End point: For drinks alone, this place isn't bad. If you're looking for dependable Mexican with your margaritas in the general area, start with Don Cuco. If you're looking to take the food quality up a notch and still enjoy some tasty margaritas, try the original Mijares in Pasadena. If you're looking for grandma's-kitchen-quality Mexican and willing to forgo the drinks and eat before 6, take a look at El Huarachito in Lincoln Heights.

Tip: The local meters need to be fed til 8pm. If you go for street parking (much advised as their valet lot is perpetually full), watch the time and you can usually find open spots on Ventura east of the restaurant (east is opposite the direction of Great Greek).

Great pizza, excellent sauce on the spaghetti, wonderful meatballs and very reasonable prices for the area.

This place is going to become a regular stop.

Through a complicated set of circumstances, I ended up walking in to find that the company reservation that I was to pick up Sunday afternoon had been effectively cancelled (someone who answered the phone at the office when they called to verify apparently provided some bad info).

The branch manager jumped through some major hoops to line up a backup arrangement for me, including calling other car companies to scare up a van for us at the original rate and finally lining up a vehicle for first thing the following morning. Tremendous effort to fix something that quite honestly they didn't even break in the first place.

And after all that effort, my company found another van for immediate pickup and we had to walk away from the Enterprise rental anyway. Shame, because these guys totally earned our business, and I'll go out of my way to make sure they're on the short list next time I need a personal or professional rental.

Great staff, clean store and the veggie sandwich is the bomb. Very reasonable prices for the area, though with the multitude of sandwich places in the area, this one is rarely crowded. Show owner comment »

Maybe it was because NAMM was in town, maybe because the owner wasn't around on this night, but my party and I had a miserable evening of snail-slow service, cold food, overcooked pasta and noise.

We had a party of eight, 9pm reservation. Appetizers ordered right away were in front of us an hour later. Entrees didn't make it to our table until 11pm.

None of the food was great. Bread was quite good and the crab cake in the appetizer sample was good, but the salmon sushi in drenched in some sickly-sweet goop (why this was even on the platter is a mystery) was just terrible.

Through the entire meal, we had to deal with blaring smooth-jazz muzak from the "entertainer" doing his thing in the lobby.

A colleague ordered the Pasta e Fagioli soup to start and was amazed at how overcooked the pasta was. He sent it back.

I ordered the Sea Bass and when it finally came with cold mashed potatoes with some strange bread sculpture using the potatoes as a stand, it proved almost inaccessible via the over-blown parchment bowl it was staged inside of. But after all this, it was merely good, not anywhere near great.

A friend who ordered the chicken fettuccine barely touched it, saying it had a strange taste in the sauce that conflicted with the chicken flavor and produced a most unappealing end result.

Several in our party who had been here before and raved about it beforehand spoke with management and sought to get reports back to the owner, and apologized to all of us who wondered why we ended up at this place.

As my friend and I left, we ruefully noted that we'd have had a much more enjoyable night had we just ended up getting burgers at Red Robin.

White House won't get a second chance from us. A disaster all around.

Hadn't been here in a few years. Liked it last time a lot, but this time, at around 8:30 on a Saturday night, we hit the place at the peak of the dinner rush.

Keftethes and hummus to start were great, along with a cold Mythos. The entire table ordered souvlaki, either chicken or steak. When our plates arrived, the rice was more cold than warm, the meat was lukewarm at best. The lemon potatoes were hot and delicious.

We flagged our server and explained that our food was mostly cold. The response was barely more than a shrug, explaining that that's how it came from the kitchen.

Not impressive. Great Greek, you're better than this. Hope you can pull it together.