Chalateco

This is a solid taqueria! The tripa tacos are great, and if you have an adventurous side, they also serve beef brain tacos! The two ladies working the front of store were excellent. Great variety of meats and scrumptious soups.

Excellent. Been in all their restaurants and they are just great. Highly recommended.

Bad customer service & servers are very rude. I have been to a lot of pupuserias & this one is by far the worst. I definitely will not be coming back & if anybody is like me that likes customer service to be good then I suggest to not come here!

3.5 stars — I was going to give 4 stars, because despite the slow service the food is pretty good. However, the service got bad enough that I’m rounding down instead.
We grabbed a couple of menus and sat down at an empty table. Almost immediately we were given chips and salsa. +1
As another review mentioned, the menu is difficult to read. I just look for prices and read descriptions, and then see if there’s a corresponding picture. There are a lot of pictures.
The hubby ordered the megatacos. which are larger than the regular tacos. I got 1 pupusa, 1 tamal, and 1 regular taco. About 7 – 8 minutes after ordering, I got the tamale. Cool. I take my time eating it, and ~5−6 minutes after I was done the hubby’s order came. A couple minutes after that I get my pupusa. Excellent. Good food, and was thinking this place should be at least 4 stars in my review on Unilocal.
15 minutes after the pupusa arrived, I’m still waiting on the taco. We ask, and say if it isn’t ready then we’ll just cancel it. Our server talks to the kitchen. At this point we can see all the finished food waiting to be served and none of them are tacos. The server comes back and says it’s ready. We’re pretty sure they just started making it, because we had to wait another 2 – 3 minutes for the taco. No apology about the wait. Just a single «sorry about that» would have kept this rounded up to 4 stars. oh well.
The salsa they give you with the dishes is different from (and spicier than) the salsa they give you with the chips. We asked for more salsa that came with the chips and they obliged (just the salsa) without extra charges. So that was nice.
It’s not as terrible as other reviews make it out to be, but it *is* quite cold in there right now so you do have to keep your jacket on. Probably better to visit during warmer weather, if you have some time to kill.

Great food and service but horrendously cold they don’t care if we are freezing ! No central heating ! It should be illegal to be in this weather inside when you are a paying customer ! I wouldn’t come here again without any type of heat it’s about 58 degrees in here ! They said they don’t have heating and we are waiting for you food almost in tears it’s so COLD ! Do something about this «manager»
I’m sure these are not legal working conditions either !
If you fixed this I would give you a five star .
DI BOT COME HERE WITHOUT HEAVY SNOW JACKET AND BEANIE AND GLOVES !

Waited over 20 minutes to get a to go order. Arrived home and found they had messed up the order. Food wasn’t great, either. We won’t be going back.

I only come for the Tacos and popusas. The rest of the menu is a hit or miss for me. The one thing that I wish they could improve is on their cleanliness of the place. I mean I understand it being busy and not having a lot of servers/​busboys but seriously it would help business, just saying.

Best tacos al pastor in the area… they actually taste like authentic Mexico City’s tacos. Pupusas? They are amazing as well… all their tacos and tortas are so good that makes it vertu difficult to choose each time. They have very fresh and tasty oysters and their shrimp in aguachile are THE BEST!!! They need to fix their beer cooler soon though. .
I have been visiting this place for over 8 yrs and it has been always very high quality. … there are others with this name (similar) in the San Jose area but they are not even close as good…

I got the tacos al pastor and my goodness what a flavor explosion! My taste buds were so happy that they were crying. This place puts pretty much all other mexican food that i have had to shame. So glad i live nearby. I will be coming back often.

Absolutely my favorite place to get papusas and a cold beer! The tacos are amazing every time plus this is the only place I know that serves the alambre especial. An absolute must for taco lovers!

LOOOVE their pupusas! I only eat pupusas when I’m really craving it and i visited my best friend in mountain view in my hometown and its good to just catch up with some good Salvadorian food in this hole in the wall Salvadorian restaurant along el camino. I got the mondongo and the pupusas!

4 stars because our waitress was a little bit snobby & one of our spoons was dirty.
Other than that, everything else was amazing!
Came with a group. 2 of us ordered soup, one ordered a rice plate and the last person ordered a shrimp cocktail.
Everything was really good. We all came here extremely hungover and after eating here, we feel a lot better.

We have been to many other Chalateco restaurants and this one is by far the best! I ordered my favorite dish Lengua en salsa (beef tongue in sauce). If you think it sounds gross and have never tried it open your horizons! I have had this dish at many different restaurants and never has it been this tender and full of flavor! My wife had the «Salvadorean sampler» (English translation) and everything on the plate was made as if to satisfy the diner rather than to save money on ingredients like I have seen other places do by skimping on stuffing. Everything was jam packed full of goodness! I HIGHLY RECOMMEND to anyone wanting a taste of El Salvador or Mexico! Four Thumbs Up! (Two from me and two from my wife)

Charming little Mexican outlet in the El Camino Real area. Extensive menu, both for vegan and non-​veg palettes. Place is fairly inexpensive and service is ok. Good portions and I had the standard mexican fare of rice and beans with Quesadilas. Guacamole was nice.
This place has a yummy spring vegetable dosa which has the most amount of veggies of all the dosas and can be made less spicy which is nice!
The manager was fantastic and accommodated our request for providing the spring vegetables separate from the dosa as opposed to in it.

Friendly staff, tasty food, and the price per food item is reasonable.
I eat at this location once every few months, and what I love most is that the quality of food always remains very high. If I had to recommend one dish, I would recommend the chicken Alambres, which is a plate of chicken tacos that comes with chopped bacon, onions, and bell peppers (photo below).
During my most recent visit, I ordered four pupusas ($ 2.25 each); two with pork, one with pork and potatoes, and one with beans and cheese. Before my pupusas were prepared, I was brought a bowl of complimentary chips and salsa. The chips weren’t homemade, but the salsa was, and it was damn good! I sat at the table closest to the kitchen, so I was able to watch a lovely older woman prepare my pupusas by hand. When the pupusas were brought to my table, they were warm, fluffy, not greasy, and tasted fresh.
If you’re in the area, I recommend eating here at least once.

Great find. Don’t let the outside fool you
This place seems similar to restaurants down in mexico.
The food was tasty. Came out pretty quick…
We ordered tacos and a burrito and a prawn dish…
They were solid.
I didn’t care for the chips because I don’t think they were home made.
We would go back. Pricing is good.

I love this place papusas tacos and yummy everything here is the best. Im addicted to this place. What hard workers cooking back in kitchen. I thank you for doing a fantastic job
Love it

We figured we’d try this place because it’s so close to where we live. Still glad we tried and checked it off the list.
First off the menu was very hard to read. Unlike most places that’d divide their entries to «chicken», «pork», «specials», etc. it was not categorized in anyway. Certainly it created a «wow look how big our menu is» illusion. But after a few min I finally realized that they were pretty much the permutations of about 10 ingredients.
Given that food was pretty cheap, I was OK with the all over the place menu. I really wanted something meatless so I ordered the pupusas with beans and decided to order the vegetarian sandwich– a thing on their menu that’s supposed to come with vegetables and avocado. It was not Mexican at all, I know, and pretty much the easiest thing to make on the entire menu. Hey for $ 5 it’s still worth the convenient right? But nope… they are out of vegetarian sandwiches. Toasts, tomato, lettuce, pepper, onion and avocado; how on earth can one be out of vegetarian sandwiches is beyond me. Decided to give it the benefit of the doubt, I ordered their tortilla soup– the only vegetarian soup on the menu. My boyfriend ordered the small sized Cuban sandwich and some appetizer bread with beans and cheese on top.
The appetizer, which came after the Cuban sandwich (not sure why or how), was humungous. It was good and interesting. It tasted kinda like pizza with super fluffy dough, but instead of tomato sauce it came with bean paste. We are big time bread fans. Easy to please, right?
The Cuban sandwich on the other hand, was indescribable, and not in a good way: it came with a few types of deep fried (breaded and not breaded) meat, ham, and what looked a lot like intestines. It also had mayo, avocado and cheese. Before this I did not even know that you could put those three in the same sandwich. It was greasy and gross. And by the way it was beyond huge. Yes we confirmed that was a «small» order. Half a sandwich probably contained like 1000 calories. My bf being a huge meat and bread lover just gave up after eating about ¹⁄₃ of the thing. Nope… just nope… really not our cup of tea.
The tortilla soup (of course it was oversized) was literally, tortilla soup: loads of tortilla strips with a few onion strings. The kind of tortilla soups I’m more used to is more tomato-​y and usually comes with more veggies. I think I’m biased thanks to Americanized tortilla soups… Either way it was just too greasy, salty and bland for my taste. When it first came out, the entire top layer was basically oil… Last time I checked oil was pretty expensive. I don’t understand why they were so generous about it.
I liked the fresh made warm pupusas. It reminded me of the stuffed pancakes from my hometown.
Service was a meh. I am not sure if they are understaffed or lack of efficiency.
I was overall pretty disappointed: I was expecting fresh vegetables on little tacos and a ton of salsa choices. Guess I should have done my research first… If you like gigantic portions of deep fried meat and greasy bread, you might like this place.

I hate to say this but the front counter workers here are RACIST AGAINST WHITE PEOPLE!!. I would hate to see what they are doing with the preparation of the food!
I have many coworkers who have been through various situations when trying to order food. Below are a couple major instances:
One coworker recently purchased a can of diet coke from a guy who charged her $ 1. Next week she went in and was charged $ 2.50 for the same can of diet coke by a girl. When questioned, the girl smirked and said «do you want it or not».
Other instances involved the same girl behind the desk completely ignoring the person who walks in to order. My coworkers stated that she seen them walk in the door and immediately turns to talk to someone behind her never turning back around. Horrible, horrible person and she needs to be fired.

Went here for the 1^st time after passing by it all these years. Boy, have I been missing out! I was in a hurry and decided to order take out. I was initially planning to order the standard taqueria fare when I noticed the Yuca con Chicharron plate. I was curious so I ordered that instead. When I arrived home, I found fried yuca with some fried pork chunks supplied with a delicious, slightly spicy «coleslaw» and an ok red sauce. What a real treat to partake of!
While I was waiting for my meal, I had the opportunity to go through their extensive menu. First thought… this isn’t a standard taqueria shop even though it’s located in a former Taco Bell! Second thought… how can they offer all these items, especially so many types of Pupusa? Answer… they make it all from scratch. I was entranced as I watched the cooks hand making each Pupusa. The first cook grabs a handful of the masa de maiz, flattens it out, makes a pocket, grabs a handful of the filling, seals it, then hands it to another cook. The second cook starts slapping the pupusa flat then puts it on the flat top to cook. Wow! There were 3 cooks working harmoniously in the kitchen to put out all the food. The place was half full but the energy was relentless.
I plan to take my sister and her daughter there tomorrow! We’ll most likely try the tacos and the empanadas de plantano!