Baja Fresh Mexican Grill

Baja Fresh has great food but do not get your food to go from the Laguna Hills store. This is the third time they have screwed up a to go order. This time they didn’t even make the food and made me wait another 10 minutes and act as if it’s no big deal. The Laguna Niguel location does a great job and they never screw anything up.
Unfortunately I have to drive further to enjoy Baja Fresh.

Second visit here this month (after having given up on this chain years ago). The Chicken Veggie Bowl special is insanely good. Marinated & chargrilled chicken over zucchini, corn, peppers, black beans & rice. Super tasty & filling meal. Bravo!
Staff was friendly. Salsa bar was fresh & well stocked and the place was clean. This location is the best one I’ve tried by a large margin.
I had this same meal last week in San Clemente & it was drastically different — just horrible really. Not what you expect from a chain restaurant. It’s like they’re not even trying. Laguna Hills has definitely earned my repeat business.

Chicken Burrito at this price should have more than 3 – 4 pieces of chicken.
If I wanted a rice burrito I would have ordered that instead.
Maybe it was because I ordered it to go?
order tacos and stay so you see what you are getting or DON’T GO HERE

Decent food. Far from authentic, but good in its own right. Big portions, and its usually very clean. I dig there salsa selection and that they offer black beans. I usually go for the steak of chicken.

We have been going to this location for a long time. But over the past several months,
we have noticed that it doesn’t seem as clean and the help changes alot and could have
better attitudes. Also, their bathroom is horrible. There is a strong sewer gas smell in
there that has been there for months on end. Shame on them for not doing something about that! Also, the air conditioning in there either needs to be fixed or turned on. It is horribly
hot in the summer, even with their fans going. Get it together Baja Fresh or you will definitely lose this customer!

I don’t frequent this place often enough, but I think I may start depending on what my wallet tells me. I believe one of the reasons why I don’t go often is I feel like they change their menu specials so much and if I like a specific thing I sometimes want to be the creature of habit and get it a few more times before I get bored.
Every time I come here though, everyone is super friendly, so extremely attentive and repeats your order back to you at least twice to make sure they have it right (Kudos for that!), and the food speaks to me saying what you are eating is just a bunch of deliciousness and darn impressive looking!
I happened to have a hankering for something a bit healthier with a little bit of bad so I ordered the Steak Tostada (which I tend to gravitate towards at Mexican Restaurants). I felt like I got most of my food groups in for the healthy and the flour tostada shell is what I would consider to be the little bit of bad so it satisfied the brain craving.
Okay, the salsa bar they have is pretty dang tasty and I love the variety. I must add Mango Salsa is hard to come by at Mexican Restaurants in South OC, so I’m glad this place has it and IT IS THE BEST IN SOUTH OC!
Even though this place is on the pricier side when it comes to fast food — it’s well worth it for the quality, freshness and friendliness you get when you walk in that door.
Cohesiveness is the key and that will make you come back for more.
If you haven’t tried this yet — check it out because it’s well worth it!

I love Baja Fresh and come here to this location for over 10 years. The food is always excellent and the service is always great. I love the chicken tacos and the taco salads. However, they should really fix the AC in this place; for years I come here, and every summertime the AC is never working. I’ve mentioned this to several of the employees from time to time over the years. A few weeks ago we came to this location and turned around and left due to the heat in the facility. Shame on Ron the owner and the management for making there workers work this way.

While the food is standard for Baja Fresh, the current manager has terrible customer service skills! First, when I ordered online, I showed up 15 minutes later and there was no customers there, the employees were just chatting. He had no idea about my order and said there was problems with the online ordering so not to use it. He went in the back and came out with my order on a piece of paper… I’m thinking, the online ordering is working just fine, he just didn’t see it. Then he proceeded to tell me not to order online again, that I should either call or come in. (ps, this has worked for me in the past under different management)
Second time, I thought I was ordering a special that is clearly picture as 2 tacos with a 99cent guacomole if you order another taco. I said, I’ll order the special with the 3 tacos and didn’t get the special price. When I asked about it, the cashier was like, do you want to cancel it then? I said, yes cancel the taco. Then when the manager came to reimburse me. He basically told me that I’m the first person to ever have this problem and nobody ever complains about it and then he snickered under his breath like I couldn’t see him right in front of me. It is seriously outrageous.
I’ve worked in customer service for years and have never seen such negligent management. While I’ve been a regular Baja Fresh customer in the past. I will NEVER go to this location again due to his utter rudeness.

A+ for the salsa bar — especially the black salsa, so perfect.
But! We ordered burritos, and they built them incorrectly (missing 1 – 3 components listed on their menu), and the protein was hard to find. I ordered the Nacho Chicken Burrito and I had maybe 3 pieces of chicken :(Their burritos are not cheap either. For the cost of their burritos we could’ve gone to Chipotle and been more happy with our choice.
We did receive a $ 5 off $ 15 purchase in the mail so we made a decision to come here for lunch, but it’ll probably be some time before we come back.

Don’t bother ordering online. They claim that it «doesn’t always work «as was the case with my order.

I submitted a complaint to the corporate site & have not heard a single word from them. Not even a useless «We’re Sorry» email. Baja Fresh Mexican Grill obviously does not care about their customers or providing any type of customer service. Overpriced AND no sense of customer appreciation. Shameful.

I order lunch from Baja Fresh once or twice a weeks and its always delicious. I love the chips and guacamole. The chicken tacos are awesome.

I love this place. They make the BEST grilled fish and their new guacamole is seriously incredible. The manager, Jesus always has a huge smile on his face and their staff is super friendly. I highly recommend this location.

This is such a great place. For the nights you don’t want to cook, but don’t wants fast food or pay an arm and a leg for the fine dining experience. Or even put makeup on to go out, but want something pretty healthy, this place is awesome! Jesus has got to be one of the nicest people ever and as the manager there he is just awesome!
The complimentary chips and salsa is always a plus, the fact that they menu has more healthy options than unhealthy options, you have increased odds of putting something good into your body. The staff here is always friendly, the place is always clean, even once the shopping center was a construction zone a few months ago, they still maintained their standard.

Nothing special and won’t be going back, not bad but.
Bit slow service, for some reason tacos had 2 tortillas, fresh but not that tasty.

Burrito is awesome with shrimp. I would’ve given a 5 stars but the chips were all crushed and sorta stale.

Once a month I have a lunch date with my previous co-​worker, since we both like Baja Fresh, this location always gets our business well at least once a month… The reason that I am writing this review, doesn’t have anything to do with the food, but it is about the service and cleanness of the restaurant itself.
When it comes to food, all Baja Fresh locations for the most part serve the same items and the food tastes the same. But what always disappoints me about this location, is about the bathroom area… Whenever I go to wash my hands, there is always a very strong, bad cleaning agent smell mixed with rotten smell from the bathroom area… I mean believe me I have been going here for the past 6 years, and everytime is like this… Considering that these restaurants are individually franchised, I hope the owner of this location, figures out something about the horrible smell…
As for the service goes, I have always got a good service from a young gentleman who seemed like a supervisor… But there is a lady who works there and she never seems happy for being there… So she needs to work on her attitude in welcoming customers because the bottom line is that I can drive 2 miles down the road on Golden Lantern and get the Same Food with a Better Customer Service!

Well, you won’t see me writing worthless, uninformative accolades like «it was yummy,» or «hubby loved it,» or «this place rocks…» the list of silly, mind-​numbing phrases goes on forever in Unilocal it seems. Are these writers that unoriginal and brainwashed from the media they have to regurgitate out those over-​used words to express their point of view? Yes!
What you will read here: Clear, honest, objective experience based on a long time consumer who has lived in many different places in SoCal and this country.
Review as of today– I revisited this branch of Baja Fresh, formerly being a long time, loyal customer for around 4 years– this came to an abrupt halt in mid– 2011 after a really bad experience with the basic Baja Burrito at this store on one fine Sunday S.O.C afternoon. Somebody at the top of this company had decided to change out the flour tortilla and meat quality– the burrito was dry and crumbly– it simply fell apart when I tried to eat through the Baja Burrito.
Steak? It was like shoe leather. The other deal breakers included a worn out, dated interior with weak AC. This combo was depressing enough that day to conclude the handwriting was on the wall for a failing, weak chain, so it was Hasta la vista to Baja Fresh and hello to becoming a Café Rio addict.
But fast forward to today, 3 years later– Café Rio has been so wildly popular, it is a bit of a hassle to go and wait in line during normal meal hours along with the mindless herds of wild animals that stand around gazing into their phones, so much that they can’t quickly make up their minds when their order time comes ’round. This equals a long time wait, just not worth it. Plus, whatever happened to Mexican music at a Mexican fast food joint! Led Zepplin playing here, along with other US rock standards? RU kidding me? Café Rio, I know you are in a Utah bubble, but please wake up and play music that doesn’t sound like someone’s rock collection on a CD.
So I decided to give Baja another chance, since The Fresh Market opened recently; hoping Baja had upped their game in consideration of a new wave of potential customers flocking into the newly renovated center.
So, Baja Burrito it was, starting off right away with a fast server who (as they did before) offered to give chips while waiting for the Burrito to be cooked (I ask for «crispy» style, which toasts the tortilla so it doesn’t flop around like the un-​grilled burritos do). So far, so good. The food soon came out, brought right to my table (as before, but this is still a star in my book, you’ll never get this in an LA branch), and I bit into a Baja Burrito that was as good as the old days. The tortilla didn’t fall apart, was grilled perfectly and the steak was very tender, with just the right touch of avocado and salsa inside. 8 out of 10 quality wise. The salsa bar is OK, not as good as it used to be prior to around 2008– they changed the green salsa to a less spicy flavor, and added 2 super hot salsas that will burn a hole in your stomach. But overall, the Baja Burrito, salsa, service were pretty damn good, good like the older times, and certainly enough to warrant another return where hopefully more of the same will be the norm and not the exception.
So for now, this branch gets a positive rating, with the exception being that the interior is still dated (obviously the franchisee or the franchisor company isn’t interested in spending money to update the look, fixtures, flooring, paint and anything else), but it’s not super worn out, so it’s tolerable. The chairs still rock unbalanced on the tile floor. The AC was glaringly weak and it was warm inside, not nice on a hot day. But hey, Mexican music was droning in the background – no rock n roll! That’s worth ½ a star right there.
You might ask: «But who’s perfect?» Well the answer out here is probably no-​one, but some chains do it a bit better in terms of cleanliness and ambiance, like Chipotle, but I don’t care for their grizzly chewy steak and dark chicken and stay away from the swine food.
Bienvenido de nuevo, Fresco Baja! No go & fix your feeble interiors!!!
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One of my regular haunts, & that’s mainly because I live in the neighborhood behind the shopping plaza that it’s located in. Food is always good. I usually get either the Mexican Chicken Caesar or the taco combo. All the staff are extremely friendly as well.
I’m kind of confused as to why I’m seeing so many low ratings for this place; I’m SUPER picky about good food & service– if I come back multiple times, regardless of where the place is located, that says a lot.

So glad that there’s a Baja Fresh so close to home. It’s perfect on those days that I don’t want to cook but eat healthy. Been here twice in the past 2 months and it’s been yummy each time. Looking forward to coming back!