El Paisa Cocina Mexicana

3 fajita tacos, simple, no rice or beans and a lemonade.
This place does tacos well. It’s not a dirty shack and it’s not corporate. It’s a healthy balance. Homemade chips and queso also awesome.
Great for takeout bc they GOTs a DRIVE THROUGH!

Good for my body! Good for my life! I love the al pastor and barbacoa corn tacos! Both the salsa are so good but not spicy enough. I still prefer the taco stands but he’s long gone. :(idk where he went. Probably illegal.
The tacos here are bigger than most places but it’s so very good! Please try it!

Good food bad service. They have a bunch of teenage kids speaking Spanglish and they do not know how to take people’s orders. I ordered a medium horchata and the girl put down a small. When I repeated that I said medium, she said we only have small and large. My question is, why would you A. Not tell me that before you decided to change it to small and B. Assume that I would want less than what I ordered. When you’re ordering they ask if you want avocado but they fail to mention that it’s $ 1 extra. If I want to pay extra for avocado I will order it. I don’t need you trying to sell it to me for a higher price. Like I said the food is good but they have crappy customer service and they take forever in the drive through.

Being born and raised in Southern California– I’m super particular about Mexican food. The words «authentic mexican» should make me think I’m eating in Ensenada. I drove by this place on my way home from work and was STARVING. So I swung in, and in my experience– Paisas know how to make good food.
I ordered a carne asada burrito plate. What I got was ‘sort of’ asada. It was crazy salty, chewy and cut into weird shaped bits.
It wasn’t all bad– if you mix the beans with the rice, you can eat it. Even with as hungry as I was, I didn’t even finish my meal.

Oh man! Love this place. The tacos are incredible. Good flavor, plenty of choices. The horchata is delicious. I highly recommend this place to anyone who wants excellent, quick Mexican food.

Great chicken quesadillas! Could really feed 2 with just 1! And the beans and rice are delicious too!
I can’t wait to try more from their menu!

I love their caldo de res! It is basically Mexican beef soup. It’s brothy and seems to be healthier than the the typical tacos, burritos, etc. They load it up with huge chunks of beef, potatoes, carrots, corn and herbs. They serve it with rice. I like to add in some chopped jalapenos and onions for some zing. When fast food gets tiring, I love to visit this place for some authentic Mexican food.

This taqueria was recommended by a coworker for having a good all around selection. He was right — well at least for the tacos and quesadillas. The food comes out quickly and you can get your own cilantro, onions, and salsa to add to what already comes with the food. It’s good for those on a budget too. Tacos are $ 1.50 and a quesadilla is just under $ 5. They give a good amount of meat and cheese (for the quesadilla). The meats were tender and flavorful. This has been added to our lunch rotation.

So I found this place by doing a random Unilocal search and off I went because if it’s good Mexican food then I want to try it.
Situated just north of the dotted line of Asian restaurants on Belknap is El Paisa Cocina. It has been around since 1998, and being that I was the only person not Mexican in the place, I took a wild stab in the dark, must be good food.
The place smelled great and the food was inexpensive. I paid $ 4.86(tax included) for a two taco combo with Mexican rice and refried beans. I got lengua and barbacoa. There were many options for meat. Chicharron, pastor, chicken, biztek and others. There were quesadilla options, burritos, flautas, menudo (on weekends) desserts and drinks, including Mexican Coke, apple soda and Jarritos. According to other reviews this was an old Popeye’s.
The food was really good! The tacos came with onions and cilantro with a wedge of lime. I added their green sauce which I believe was jalapenos and avocado. It was creamy, not as spicy as I would have liked, but it worked well. The lengua was probably the best I’ve had to date. The barbacoa was decent too, but it could have used a little more flavor to it. Also the refried beans were melt in the mouth good. I’ve never had beans like that. This is a place I want to come back to really soon just to try other things.
Overall, a great food experience and I will be back quick.
Enjoy.

I chose El Paisa for breakfast this morning. There are PLENTY of taco shops in this area and I’ve really been wanting to stop here. I ordered Huevos Ranchero. I had a choice of over easy or hard fried eggs. I chose the over easy and they turned out to be a bit more done than I would have liked but the sauce they put on it made up for that. I’m talking TASTY. My meal came with beans, rice and my choice of tortilla, corn or flour. Everything was freshfreshfresh, the service was fast and friendly. Everything I look for in a weekday breakfast to go. Beats the heck out of Jack in the Box for sure! Can’t wait to try them out for dinner soon.
From my limited experience with this establishment I’m going to say it’s a good choice when there are literally 20 taco stands in the area. They’re open 24 hours a day to boot! Go, try it!

I can’t believe this place has such a low rating on Unilocal!I love this place! This is a solid 4 stars (in my opinion)
When I first walked in, I noticed there were a ton of mexicans eating at a mexican joint… almost always a surefire way of knowing if a place is good and authentic or not. The staff is really nice and even when it’s busy, I get my order in 5 minutes or less.
Their meats are very tender and flavorful, my favorite is the barbacoa. I like to order the taco combo that consists of tacos, rice, and beans for around $ 6 – 7. I’ve also ordered their tostada combo which is around the same price, probably not as good as the tacos, but you get a lot for your money! Aside for the good and reasonably priced food, there are two reasons why I’ll keep coming back– the extremely crunchy and flaky quesadillas (a must try) and the creamy, thick, and spicy green sauce. I don’t know what it’s called but I love it so much I drench it in everything!
Come if you’re hungry, El Paisa has good food with generous portions and you’ll definitely get your bang for the buck!

I like to come here to get my «ghetto taco» fix when I’m craving Fuel City, no lie. Because I live in Fort Worth and do not want to make the drive to Dallas, I like to settle on this place instead. For those who are worried about the authenticity of this place, it does look a little misleading as the building used to be a Popeyes. Don’t fret because everything in here is authentic and good! The whole menu looks pretty credible. They even serve Jarritos here. It is definitely NOT Taco Bell or Bueno! Eyes closed, you would think you’re ordering from a taco trunk!
Lengua, al pastor, and barbacoa on corn tortillas with all the fixin’s is what I usually get. I love picadillo filling and unfortunately it was a total letdown here. I guess I’ll just leave that to Fuel City. They’re very generous with their the amount of meats that are stuffed into each tacos. I will get pretty full by just eating 3! The meats are well seasoned and so moist. I’m actually drooling as we type this.

So, I’ve been passing the new El Paisa (use to be a Popeye’s Chicken) for a while now (to and from work), and I noticed that they recently put up a sign saying that they are offering $ 2.99 Breakfast.
Ok, that offer sounds good enough for me to check them out again (I’ve eaten at the Bedford location during lunch before and left unimpressed — lots of uneatable fat in my meal).
I pull into the location after work a few days ago and notice that there’s some fine print on that sign that I couldn’t see from the road. Apparently, it’s $ 2.99 for a Breakfast Burrito with Orange Juice /​Coffee (if I read it correctly).
Alright, I go to the drive thru speaker and order 6 (10′ tortilla) Breakfast Burritos (1 of every variety –bean, papa, ham, sausage, and chorizo– and an extra chorizo).
I pull up to the window, pay (about $ 20 bucks for 6 burritos), then wait… and wait… and wait…
BTW, I was the only person at the location at the time (drive thru and dining room) and it was easily over a 10 minute wait time (remember I’m sitting in the drive thru).
Usually I think to myself «I’m just imagining this is taking a long time», but this time I’m positive that this was a long wait since I texted my girlfriend after waiting a few minutes, then she texted me back 7 minutes later.
Anyhow, she offers two salsas (verde and red — which I take both of), I get the order and leave.
At this point I’m thinking, «These burritos better be awesome considering the cost and wait».
Well… there weren’t.
First of all, look at the pic of the burrito that I posted. See how big that burrito is compared to the fork? Yep, that’s the size of a $ 2.99 burrito (BTW, the biggest size they offer).
Also, WHERE THE HECK IS THE MEAT IN THIS THING? OMG, the chorizo burrito tasted like a bean /​egg /​and cheese burrito with a very slight chorizo flavoring (BTW, not spicy at all).
For a burrito of this size and cost, I’m expecting… I don’t know… Chorizo. (and this was not a isolated case, the other Chorizo burrito had the same taste /​missing meat as the previous one).
I also had the Papa (potato) burrito and that was disappointing too.
The best way I can describe this is that they boiled the potatoes (like you would if you were making mashed potatoes), then they skinned, chopped and dropped the potatoes into this burrito.
Missing something…
Yeah, they didn’t season the potatoes at all (no seasoning = no taste), then to make it worse some of the potatoes were not even cooked all the way (Ever bit into a raw potato before? Gross, huh?)
But look on the bright side… at least I could see chunks of potato in this burrito (unlike the missing chorizo).
Look, they claim that this is authentic Mexican food. And I’ll give them credit on the tasty verde salsa and the choice of cheese and beans in the burritos.
But, seriously I would rather order a breakfast burrito at Whataburger or McDonald’s before getting one at El Paisa again.
Strike two, El Paisa.