Chicks ‘n’ Salsa Mexican Grill

Forget Chipotle – especially now. Everything I’ve had from Chicks N Salsa has been delicious. The veggie fajitas are my top choice and can’t beat the salsa bar.

The interior is clean and spacious. Lots of tables and lots of windows. Everything seemed very fresh, service was a little slow but they give you chips while you wait and you can help yourself to the salsa bar. All the salsas were tasty. I had the fish tacos and would not get them again since the sauce that came on it was gross. The fish itself tasted fine though. He had the fajita platter and everything was bland. All in all it was fresh but bland, shouldn’t need to dump salsa on everything for flavor. May go back to try the chicken next time.

Terrible experience.
Ordered a crispy fish taco — did not come crispy
Ordered two strawberry lemonade and BOTH lids were not secured. Went to life them up and completely spilled all over my car I literally just got cleaned.
Day ruined, meal ruined — I’ll stick to Chipotle.

I was really excited to try this place since there is NO good Mexican food near elmhurst. However, it was very disappointing. The fish tacos tasted really off for some reason… I had to order something else because I took one bite and wanted to spit it out. The chipotle mayo that comes on the taco was really nasty and processed tasting. Fish just didn’t taste good. The guacamole was great but the queso tasted like processed cheese from a can. Salsas were alright, nothing to rave about. Service was great though!

I’ve been here several times now. I’be always ordered the b battered Baja fish tacos. They are excellent! Crispy and topped with a mixture of shredded cabbage, minced cucumber, and a bit of shredded carrot and cilantro with a wonderful chipoltle mail on a choice of floor or corn tortilla. Chips are good with a few different choices of salsa. Today we also tried the chicken. It was very good, but after the track, we weren’t as hungry and brought the leftovers home. highly recommended place for a quick bite.

A great place for some tasty tex-​mex and attentive service!
I’ve been here three times since working in Glen Ellyn. The fish tacos are great with both the broiled and fried fish. Often, the fish can be dry or flavorless, but this was done very well.
When you order, they are prompt and courteous, and the food is then brought to your table. They have a salsa bar with mild, medium and hot salsas, along with pico de gallo, cilantro, fresh lemon and lime. ALL their salsas are well made and fresh, with good flavor for what they are.
I’m coming back here for lunch again!

Food is consistently good, love the beer battered fish tacos

I’ve loved Chicks n Salsa since back when I lived in Glen Ellyn in ’08. I used to make a weekly trek there and get the best burrito on the planet: The Gone Fishin’. It’s basically a giant fish taco and it’s delicious. I can easily put away two.
I’ve had pretty much everything on the menu and it’s all great! If you can’t find something here that you’d want to eat, there’s something wrong with you.
I absolutely love the salsa bar, as well. I wish there were a few more offerings but what they do have is good enough to drown your favorite Mexican dish in.

I really want to give more stars. I do.
To be fair, I don’t eat beef or pork, so I’m missing a big portion of the menu. But everything I’ve had here has been okay at best. Quesadillas, burritos– just very bland. Wish I could get a chipotle sauce or something to kick it up to 4 or 5 stars.
Staff is friendly, food is fresh. But if you don’t eat meat– no Bueno.

Restaurant was clean and well lit. Plenty of seating inside and out. My first reaction past that was «what theme are they trying to convey»? Menu is traditional Mexican fare. Tacos, wraps and burritos to name a few. The décor has no feel of the food they offer. Cold small white tiles overwhelm the order counter. Very much get the feeling that you are in a public pool bathroom. Drink stations looked like something in an airport terminal. The idea of having a salsa bar free to dine in guests was very nice until you got a tiny portion of stale chips. I love salsa and was still excited to give the salsa bar a go. Very disappointing. Only three types of salsa. The two Reds were very similar in texture and taste. The green was of the same texture but had the sweeter flavor that tomatillos provide. But it too was very bland. The containers supplied for the salsa were maybe 1 ounce each. So you had to either grab several or repeat trips.
I only ordered 1 taco as it was my first experience and I may want to sample something else after. I am so glad that was the only thing I ordered. I got my food and saw that it came with onions and tomatoes both of which I told the cashier I did not want. No big deal. I scraped them off. The first bight was all I had to have to judge this taco. Awful. The beef tasted bland with an out of place flavor. It seemed like it was cooked in a hot holding table and left out for a day. It was dry yet of a weird spongy like texture. I noticed they had bottles of various hot sauces all of which were varieties you could get at any supermarket. How uninspiring. Made me think there salsa were just that too. A can opened and poured into a pan. Why would you put out that you have the best food just to offer store bought sauces? Create your own signature sauce. Maybe that would help add flavor to the meat.
The person I was eating with ordered two chicken tacos and one beef. When he saw the look on my face after my first bite he tried his to see if I was mistaken about the flavor. He moved the food around in his mouth and swallowed. He shared that he didn’t like his either. He felt bad that he still had two more chicken tacos to eat and I had nothing so he offered me one. I said no thanks but let me sample a piece of the chicken from one. Same as everything else I had tried. Bland. Not even a chicken taste. It was so dry it was what I would imagine chewing on sawdust would be like. Again, I wanted to see his reaction. This time I did not comment on my reaction. He said the same thing that I experienced. Dry and flavorless.
I really wanted to try their «voted best in Chicagoan» fish taco but I decided to cut my losses and leave hungry.
We left. My coworker said «well I guess we can cross this place of the list.»
Find an identity and level of quality and flavor that are worth my money. Until then I would be more then happy satisfying a Mexican craving by going to Taco Bell instead.
Sorry Chicks and Salsa. I just don’t find any reason to return.

Let me say first, I am from California so my expectations on Mexican food are very high. I like Baja style Mexican so I ordered the shrimp tacos. They were the small shrimp, not like the typical large shrimp. They had some seasoning but not enough. They didn’t have the typical char that comes from cooking them on high heat, they almost tasted boiled. Everything was kinda blah!

We order from here whenever I have a meeting in Lombard, it seems. It’s a solid choice for suburban tacos, with decent guacamole and really good salsa. The tacos were a little overwhelmed by the corn tortillas, but overall, fresh and pretty good.

Chicks ‘n’ Salsa earns another star. I discovered the grilled fish tacos and burrito are the best thing on the menu. The fish is very good and you can tell that the veggies are fresh chopped — no prepacked bags of veggies here.
Service is always friendly and efficient. I’m glad I have rediscovered this restaurant. It has become a favorite lunch destination.

The classic 3.5 star review. I walked in and I thought I was in a Baja Fresh, between the salsa bar, and black and white décor. I ordered the double leg (2 thighs and 2 legs) with two sides and an extra side. For $ 9.00, that’s really good value. The fact that they have Tazo bottled iced tea is another huge plus in my book, as I am hooked on their Giant Peach tea.
They gave me a basket of chips and I tried a couple of the salsas. They were all pretty mild, except for the habanero, which had a good amount of kick. I like green salsas in general, but the chipotle was probably my favorite here. I waited 6 or 7 minutes for my food. The four pieces of chicken I got looked like the runt of the chicken litter; the pieces were so small I thought I was being served pigeon. That said, the seasoning was really good, the skin was crisp, and the meat was juicy. Not a ton of meat granted, but what I had was cooked very well.
For sides, I had the grilled veggies. Bell peppers, red onions, and carrots were well seasoned with salt and pepper and tasted great. The garlic mashed potatoes were quite good, but maybe the could have used a little more butter. For the final side, I could have gone with tortillas or corn muffins. I chose the latter and got two pale white muffins. I took a bite of one and there were just a ton of corn kernels inside. To repeat, it was just a plain muffin with corn kernels. It was terrible and I didn’t touch it again.
I had a good experience. The service was decent, not great, but not bad. I would probably return since most of the food is made very well and is offered at a fair price. But no corn muffins ever again!

The service was good, steak fajitas were tasty, enchiladas were good. The food was good for the price, the flan on cake was good, especially since I don’t tend to like flan. The quality of the food like spot on for the price. We will go back.
Now mind you this is like the restaurant «Baja Fresh» so don’t think you are going to be having really authentic stuff, it’s just not at that price point. But for the Mexican food I have had in the Midwest, it’s worth coming back to. It will be in our rotation of restaurants for sure.

I do have to say — for a place in the suburbs, the tacos were pretty good. The fish tacos weren’t exactly ‘the best’, but the salsa helped with the experience and I would probably stick with the tacos in the future. Overall — not bad, but I don’t think I would make any particular plans to visit this place again unless it was nearby and super convenient. I will, however, definitely come back here at least once just to have the bf try it.
When I was visiting, my cashier was in training so he had some confusions — but no points docked for him — probably more so for the person who was overseeing him. She seemed a bit harsh and was talking a little rudely to me when she was trying to clarify something (maybe she stressed out, im not sure but I felt super odd with the whole situation).
I do hope to return and give a higher rating with a better experience :-)

Cardinal fitness is just a good 50 steps from this place. My logic was, «good job, you had a great workout! Now go get some tacos.» I really like this place. Try their Neptune burrito. It’s really good. The fish tacos are a MUST! This is probably the best place for fish tacos.
The food is made to order so be ready to wait for a bit. If you want it right away, you better call ahead. I appreciate the made to order way because it’s truly fresh food and you know that the meat hasn’t been sitting there for hours.

This review is only based on the fish tacos and chips and salsa. One word: perfection. I went two years ago and loved their tacos and I was in the mood for tacos recently and my friend reminded me about our visit back then. We couldn’t imagine how we forgot about this place. All of their ingredients taste absolutely fresh and delicious. The salsas are tasty as well, wish the little containers were a bit bigger but otherwise the food is absolutely amazing. The only real downside is that there’s only one location. :(definitely best fish tacos in all of Chicagoland!

The same people who say they’re addicted to Chipotle, is exactly how I feel about this place.
This is my favorite place for the fast/​mex/​americano styled food. Not sure if what I listed is a thing but you get it.
I love the queso dip so much, it’s so addicting. I usually get a steak quesadilla or enchiladas. I really, really enjoy both of them. I’ve tried the fish tacos, which are very good. I’ve only tried the carinatas tacos which are very solid as well.
They also have a salsa bar, which has a variety of 4 type of salsa. To me the salsa ranges from mild, mild, mild to medium. It’s all fresh though, which is awesome. They cut up extra cilantro, lemons, limes so you can add that to your salsa concoction.
The service here is almost always great and I’ve never had a real problem.
I can’t say enough nice things about this place.

Boy, things are getting rough for the taco places… there are so many places to get a great taco for just a few bucks that the standards are quite a bit higher now than they were a few years ago.
The place is called Chicks ‘n’ Salsa, so I brought Lisa and my favorite hot sauce with me… I’m glad I brought my chick, but they had a reasonably good hot sauce (el yucateco) there, so I could have left mine at home.
OK, in all fairness, it took me a little bit to figure out the concept. I ordered a three taco combo, Steak, Chicken and Carnitas. and because I felt the need to be thorough (not gluttonous… thorough) I also got a fish taco (beer battered) and a platter of rice and beans.
Lisa got a fish taco and a carnitas taco. she is not nearly as thorough as I am.
We also got a 4oz thingy (ramekin) of Guacamole and some chips.
OK, so maybe I was a little hungry.
We both tried the fish taco’s first. and realized that they were sorely lacking in flavor… I’m not of the mind to dump salsa on a fish taco. but we found that they offer fresh chopped cilantro at the salsa bar (four salsa’s to pick from. I like the Habanero one) and there was a slice of lime in my food basket. cilantro and lime and suddenly my fish taco is pretty good. Not epic, but pretty good.
I used salsa’s and hot sauce to add flavor to the rest of the tacos, tried them plain first and then added stuff. The steak and chicken were decent, I really liked the carnitas.
They served the «rice and beans platter» in kind of a strange way, using a three portion divided plastic plate with one of the sections empty. It was fine, just kind of odd.
I liked the restaurant, it’s definitely got a fast food feel… but there seems to be a focus on good ingredients.
It’s good and I would go back, I’m just not excited like I have been at some other places with 4 – 5 star tacos.