Barrio Cafe

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CLOSED NOW - Opens atTomorrow 11:00am

After ready many reviews about this place I want to set the record straight. The food tasted good but over priced for Mexican food. I am always behind owners of resturaunts as it is always courageous to go out on your own.
The portion sizes were small and I liked this owners concept. To spend 30 dollars or more per person for food that is not much better in flavour or quanitity than alot of mom and pops resturaunts is not prudent. This is not the value that we find at let's say Baby Kays cajun. If I want gourmet food I want gourmet food. There seems to be some type of gourmet snobbery which tends to over exaggerate based on concept. I want tortillas and salt and not bruscheda and a small piece of bread and two small pieces of zuchinni as sides.

The Barrio Café is the real deal for truly authentic Mexican food. This is not tex-mex. Excellent entrees prepared in true Mexican style. Restaurant is small and crowded. Lively atmosphere and excellent tequilas and margaritas.

I order the lobster cassidia and chicken torta. The $16 lobster appetizer was four little round 3 inch hard flour disks with a small piece of rubber lobster under a sprinkling of mystery cheese. Zero taste. The $13 chicken torta was equally unsavory. One thick slab of over cooked chicken on some type of stale roll. A miniscule dab of guacamole was accompanied by some limp lettuce. After finishing lunch and waiting for 20 minutes for the check I finally got up and asked the cashier to please bring me the bill. I won't be back.

My experience at the Barrio Cafe was very very dissapointing. I brought my

family to the restaurant knowing that it was suppose to be gourmet Mexican

style food. The atmosphere was WAY too loud to even hold a conversation

without practically screaming. My boys wanted to make some minor changes

to their entree and the waiter (kyle) was ridiculously smug about not being able

to make any changes! He made comments that "we don't have rice or beans

anywhere in the restaurant" implying that we didn't know anything about the

restaurant. I guess I didn't know he was a partner in the business. I had pollo

poblando. The minature chicken breasts were tough and didn't have hardly

any poblano taste at all. The tequila shrimp tacos were good... On the whole

there are many other "fancy" Mexican restaurants in Phoenix that cater to the

patron and have full bodied flavorful food.

If you are in Phoenix. Check out the Barrio Cafe that has excellent mexican food and also shows and sells the work of local and regional artists.