Tijuana Flats

The type of place you’d find near a college campus. Young wait staff.
The bean and chicken burrito I got was not great. Edible, but nothing to write home about. The refried beans tasted canned. 90% beans, 10% chicken.
I will give it another chance, but I think I’ll try the tacos instead. It’s hard to mess up tacos.

How the hell are you a Tex Mex restaurant and not know its Cinco de Mayo! This place is a disaster. All three entrees arrived separately 20 minutes apart. They were a cheese and chicken quesadilla and a 2 chicken tacos with cheese only. My blackbean burrito was stone cold by the time I was able to eat it. Looking around there may be people having a worse experience than us. I would say avoid it an go to Chipotle but that may kill you. Stay
Home or step up to Abuelas. Hell Taco Bell would have been better than this. Probably better service as well. Stay home and avoid the heartburn and I don’t mean from the food. Shame on you Tijuana Flats you’re better than this location. Time to hire some grow ups to run this place ADIOS!

This place is great! The food is delicious and there is a hot sauce bar with about 12 types from sweet to ghost pepper.

Super fresh, nice staff, and got our food quickly. I had the bowl with carnitas, couldn’t finish the entire thing it was piled high. Def will be back.

Great place to eat! Food was good and staff was very friendly. Caleb was the BEST! We live in Vegas and always stop by for a quick meal. Highly recommended.

Took about 30 for an order of enchiladas and a nacho. The nacho chips were over cooked and cold, not much cheese or chicken, but the enchiladas were pretty good with fresh vegetables and tender meat. I would give the nachos a 2 star and steak enchiladas a 4 star. Service was very good and it was very clean but with a nice and casual atmosphere.

This Tijuana Flats disappointed me a bit with the size of the tacos, but the service was excellent as always. Vibrant and energetic environment with music and tv’s playing. I had the Taco Tuesday special that included 2 beef tacos, chips, and a drink for $ 5.99 and my wife had her usual black bean quesadilla. They really watched how much meat went into the taco shell with the top half of the taco being empty. They attempted to fill the taco with 2 inches of cheese to make up for the lack of beef, but I could clearly see it. Tasted like a larger version of a Taco Bell taco. May have just caught them on a bad day. The tacos typically have a good portion of meat in them, but was disappointed this go around. Once again, service was awesome.

They did an excellent job of addressing my concern on my previous review. I made a return visit and the service was extremely prompt and friendly. The strived very hard to make sure my order was correct and brought out to me in a very timely manner. I will return again and often! I do enjoy their megajuana Burito, it is quite delicious

Went for take out during Sun and Fun; simple orders of burritos. The sauce bar was interesting.

It’s like Chipotle with a spicy edge. Lots of spices, especially spicy sauces, to choose from. They give discounts to teachers. And they’re closed on major national holidays (e.g., Memorial Day, the 4^th, Thanksgiving).

DO NOT BOTHER!!! This place is a joke. If you want dog food /​taco bell type meat in your buritto or chimi then come on in. I ordered twice for take out and both times order was messed up. The manager Ray attitude sucks he blamed me as the customer for the order being wrong???
Learn some customer service and cook real mexican/​tex-​mex food and maybe you will be worth trying again but I doubt it.
As for now Id rather drive to Orlando and go to Chuys.
Don’t bother coming here go someplace else.

Been here a couple of times and the staff is fantastic!
Favorites are Flautas, cheese dip and chimichanga! Last visit had a few sauces (sweet chili) missing which was a huge disappointment as that is one of the main reasons we go!
Of course their walls are fully decorated with a crazy, fun theme!

This is good place, and I’m glad we have it. The food is tasty, the sauces are spicy, and the service is always impeccable. It’s simple and good, and a lot of places can’t seem to get that right.

Sporting a huge sauce bar and great, authentic Mexican food, Tijuana Flats is a fantastic choice for those nights when you have a hankering for tacos. My only complaint would be the lack of toppings on my enchiladas.

You can’t go wrong with Tacos. Deff try the Slap my Sweet Ass and Call Me Sally Sauce. It will change your life.

Not even close to the quality and taste of the one in Brandon. I love Tijuana Flats, but would never go to one in Lakeland again. I gave it two attempts, both epic fails.

I went here for the first (and only) time a few weeks ago. It was a slow night I guess, as I went during dinner time during the week. My food took 10 minutes or so to come out (I got a quesadilla), so I spent my time looking at the (oddly) named sauces and picking a few to take home with me. When I got home the food was, alright. I’d rather go to Moe’s or get quesadillas from Red Elephant. I don’t think I will be back.

Tijuana Flats is a staple in our dining-​out rotation. Taco Tuesday is one of the best deals out there, giving you two large tacos, chips and a drink for $ 5. You get your choice of hard or soft, flour or wheat tortilla, choice of chicken, beef, carnitas (pork), blackened chicken, or for $ 1 more, steak. Toppings include lettuce, tomato, onion, fresh jalapeño, olives & sour cream. The sauce bar rocks! May I suggest the Georgia Peach and sweet onion or Jason’s Mom Hot Sauce.
Many other things on the menu to choose from, but the tacos are too good for me to pass up!

I’ve lived in the south for all my life, with quite a bit of time deep in the heart o’ Texas. And I’ve been lucky to engage in quite a bit of travel for work, which means that I’ve seen other American regions «interpret» some Texan staples, from Barbecue in Maine to Michigan’s Tex-​Mex to Chicken-​Fried Steak in LA, the results are often, well, horrifying. (That said, I’ll take Maine Seafood and LA Chinese any day)
So, with trepidation, I thought I would give Florida Tex-​Mex a try.
Ordered a steak Tijuana burrito on wheat (no corn tortilla options, which is an instant strike against authentic), with everything to go. Service was quick, efficient and good. There didn’t appear to be any to go containers for the salsa/​sauce bar, so I skipped that (Twenty years ago, I would have done some serious damage to it. Now, however, the heat gets its revenge rather easily). There didn’t appear to be anything along the lines of a Pico or a Tomatillo salsa, either.
Got home, opened the container. First concern, no foil wrapper around the burrito. Might be OK for the smaller ones, but the larger burritos need a little extra support while eating. The chips were thick and chewy, which might appeal to some but didn’t do it for me. First bite revealed the burrito wasn’t wrapped correctly. Tried to fix it, but still experienced a total structural failure. Thank goodness for the included knife and fork.
Steak was good, veggies were fresh. Two lonely Jalapeño slices imparted a wee bit of heat and the black bean count was pretty low. Cheese appeared melted to the tortilla, not the filling, which is odd and, in my mind, not particularly desirable.
So, overall, there you go. I’ll put it in the same category as Taco Bell, definitely not Tex-​Mex, absolutely not Mexican. Some new generic hybrid.
A star for the staff, who was good. And that’s about it. Maybe the point is to set yourself on fire with the sauces, I dunno. Maybe, based on the other reviews, I hit them on a bad day. My advice? Buy some foil to wrap around the burrito, work on the filling proportions and seriously consider swapping out those chips. And maybe fly out to Texas, find a FreeBirds, and see how its done.

As America becomes more aware of the many culinary traditions that fall under the banner of «Mexican» cuisine, and we become less insular in our dining tastes, I worry sometimes that the cuisine that paved the way for this explosion of gastric diplomacy, the oft-​maligned «Tex-​Mex,» is becoming less accessible to diners outside of the American southwest. Places like Tijuana Flats help keep this decidedly fusion tradition alive, and as fond as I am of the Guadalajaran, Oaxacan, Chihuahuan, Sonoran, Baja and Riviera Maya culinary traditions I’ve encountered in the many years I’ve spent accumulating inches on the waistline, I’m happy to see places like Tijuana Flats surviving.
The menu boasts all the usual variety you’d expect, steak and chicken (the latter also in a «blackened» option), served in burritos of multiple sizes (regular or «chimichanga» fried), tostadas, quesadillas, flautas, tacos, and enchiladas. Vegetarian options exist, but I’ve never tried ‘em. The three key burrito sizes (regular, Tijuana and Megajuana) carry the load spectrum admirably from «sane» to «glutton,» and your meal with come with chips, unless you ask for them «Cadillac,» which adds rice and beans for a few extra bucks.
Orders are placed at the counter, but brought tableside. Drinks are refilled by roving waitfolks; be sure to leave a tip. Tables are catch-​as-​catch-​can and during busy times, you might have to send a member of your party to grab and hold one for you as you wait in line to order.
The food’s simple and good, the chicken and steak both marinated and flavorful. I detect notes of lime in the latter; the blackened chicken just tastes blackened. There’s a «golden» flaky finish to the tortillas suggesting a bit of butter; they proudly advertise «no lard,» which definitely takes the flavor out of classic Mexican territory and into Tex-​Mex range.
The venue’s legendary pepper bar boasts roughly sixteen sauces, with tiny paper cups for sampling, ranging in heat from «safe for everyone» to «a bit painful.» I found the hottest of their sauces (the Endorphin Rush, Scorned Woman, and similar top-​shelfers) fairly mild, but then, I found Quaker Steak and Lube’s Atomic Challenge wings «a nice medium heat.» Sane people seem to find the bar stocks a good range of heats for every taste, so you’ll likely be happy with its variety.
What I love about their pepper bar, though, isn’t the heat range, but the flavor range. There are some really inventive hot sauces there, for folks not accustomed to such variety, including a peach sweet sauce, a habanero jelly, a honey-​based sauce, and a smoky green «Lizard Spit» Cajun vinegar base that’s quite nice. They rotate the sauces often, so don’t expect to see the ones you had last time when you return — favorites recur, but the assortment changes regularly.
It’s a loud venue, boisterous and popular with the college crowds, with a slightly more aggressive music mix than you’d expect — don’t expect to have any quiet conversations there, much as the food and wild décor might inspire them. Also, if you plan to experiment with sauces, be sure to wash your hands afterward — one touch to the eye after handling some of those sauces will be a lesson bitterly learned.
The food’s warm, flavorful and generous. Ten bucks a head will feed almost anyone well, and if you split an order a nachos as well, it’s a feast to rival the fern bars and pubs for a bit less cash, and the hot sauce bar’s a conversation starter every time. Tijuana Flats may not stand out as an epic culinary juggernaut, but it doesn’t need to – it’s Just Plain Good, a little adventurous in a safe and manageable way that won’t put off your friends, and that’s a fine thing all by itself. It’s classic, dependable, good-​tasting Tex-​Mex fun.