El Balazo

El Balazo probably is, was, and will forever be the best bar ever built in San Ramon. It stole my heart as well as hundreds, if not thousands of my hard earned dollars. The food was kind of expensive, but where else are you really going to find anything that even resembles authentic Mexican food in San Ramon? Sure, a super burrito might be $ 11 but it’s also probably bigger and thicker than your forearm, so I see no reason to complain. If you’re eating a burrito that size in one sitting, than you will have much bigger things to complain about than the décor or general friendliness of the bean scoopers in the future anyway.
Aside from the restaurant, the El Balazo bar was the cheapest and biggest anywhere around town. $ 2 happy hour Budweisers, a dozen flat screen televisions, and a free taco bar every Sunday morning and Monday evening during football season could not be beat. The bartenders there were all really cool and friendly unless you were the douchebag that rolls in 10 deep with a pink Affliction t-​shirt screaming an order of 10 Jagerbombs with a side of cherry juice or some shit.
I’m deeply sadded by the closing of El Balazo and I truly believe that an $ 11 super burrito sized piece of Our and San Ramon’s hearts have died along with our favorite bar.

Used to be a legit place to watch american football games with all my san ramon buddies. Decent price for budweisers (what else could you ask for) and Jerry the bartender is super cool and he’s also a family man (he has a child! Tip the man!). The taco bar on sundays is not only delicious, it’s just another example of El Balazo going above and beyond to make their patrons feel welcome. Great outdoor seating, as well!
To some of the people who are ripping this place for being a crappy mexican food joint, what the #%@# were you expecting?! You’re getting mexican food from bar in san ramon. Are you mental? You shouldn’t even be allowed to review mexican food anymore. Do us all a favor and delete your Unilocal account. Just quit. You fail.

El Balazo San Ramon — Forever In Our Hearts
I used to enjoy going to El Balazo aka El B aka balaz
El Balazo is good for mexican food in san ramon; its probably your best option. El Balazo also had a nice large bar with a great outdoor patio area.
Its a great place to get a burrito have a couple beers ($ 2 dollars all day everyday) and watch a sporting event. They had a bunch of nice tvs and if football was on there was a free taco bar.
I really got to know a few of the bartenders (Jerry, Colleen, and Wendy) and they became great friends and once the bar closed I was left worrying about how they were going to pay for their kids to go to pre school.
Basically El Balazo had cheap beer and good mexican food as far as san ramon standards go and cool people working there. All these fucks that are complaining should shut the fuck up and delete your Unilocal account.
Shut the fuck up — El Balazo 4 life

They closed down but I thought I’d still give a review.
This is where me, my boyfriend and his band friends eat dinner before band rehearsals. I think that they served okay Mexican dishes. Not really going to say that they’re the best, as I have eaten better Mexican food. The place is connected to a bar and it gets pretty noisy. It’s like mixing a family-​friendly area with rowdy drunken folks playing pool.
I guess, base from reading a lot of reviews here, everybody sounded that they’re glad that they closed down. I wouldn’t want to wish any business to close down (except for Motif Lounge). However, I guess that’s beyond Unilocal.
Goodluck to the owners.

Sadly all El Balazo restaurants are presently closed. The sign says «remodeling» but the rumors are: (1) undocumented worker raid (see 2008 news) and/​or (2) failure to pay taxes.
This is really a shame as EB makes the best burritos in the Tri-​Valley area. They are much larger than any you’ll find at the national chains, and no annoying extra charges. Plus, they have 2-​for-​1 coupons in almost every coupon mailing and local publication.
The major downside are the lines which can be long at peak lunch and early dinner hours. Also the interior leaves something to be desired. This one also has a noisy bar. But can’t be beat for takeout.

FINALLY CLOSED AND I’M NOT SHOCKED!
el balazo used to be the best place around for mexican food but i’m sorry to say those days are over.
you can actually still get a pretty good burrito amongst other things at the danville location but that’s one of the last reliable location i can think of.
what led to the downfall of el balazo was the expansion of the san ramon location. this location was always my go to place for good mexican food as i worked next door at the hopyard. since the expansion and the addition of the bar it brought in a much worse crowd and they let the quality of the food suffer.
the main emphasis has become the bar and the nightlife. i went here one night to get take-​out for my family and the bar was packed but the restaurant was slow. the kitchen and line where you order looks like something in a school cafeteria and the food tastes pretty much like that these days.
if your looking for a cheesy nightlife crowd and want to catch a fight or catch some sort of disease el balazo is the place for you. if you want a good mexican food experience please just look anywhere but here.

El Balazo is okay. They don’t have the greatest food, but the atmosphere is great.
Taco Tuesdays are the best; $ 1 tacos and $ 5 on certain drinks.
Try it out. :)

Last night, Four of us (3 adults and 1 toddler) shared the Carne Asada platter + Pollo Asado platter. If I hadn’t been told that a platter is big enough to feed 2 average sized adults, I would’ve ended up with way too much food. Each platter comes with beans, rice and choice of meat. Other entrees included taco bowls, burritos, typical items you might think of in a Mexican restaurant. The meat was seasoned well and grilled just about right. The steak was slightly crispy but not dry, chicken was very tender on the inside.
I entered on the back side of the restaurant, which was the bar, some may consider this the front-​side, and the restaurant dining room was on the other half of the unit. At this San Ramon location, the customers are separated from the servers and food by a glass partition to about 4 ½ feet. My brother in law got his food and waited at the register for his server to accept payment. The server decided to help another customer first though because the rush had picked up and there doesn’t seem to be a standard system for them to serve and collect. Finally, my brother in law flagged somebody down; but I can see how occasionally, a customer could get away with all this deliciousness for free.
Platters are $ 11.95 which may sound expensive to some for a Mexican restaurant, but I assure you, the platters are huge, and apparently, you can always find a buy-​one-​get-​one-​free coupon. The deal is that you order one platter and two drinks, the 2^nd platter is on the house, which roughly comes out to $ 16-​$ 17 for a large meal for 2 – 4 people (since a platter serves more than one of me). I’m definitely coming back here. There’s a chain of El Balazos, including two in SF.

Today I had a hankering for Carne Asada. Now I needed to get it STAT, which meant the closest thing was El Balazo. Now what to get? Nachos? No too much cheese and being lactose intolerant and going back to work just means «no bueno» for my cube mates. The Platter? Hrm… dunno, just felt like too much food. Now Taco Salad. I saw some lady in a presentation today having a taco salad and perhaps that image stuck in my head. So I decided on Taco Salad. They layer in your choice of Taco shell (corn, wheat, spinach, jalapeño, or tomato tortilla shell), rice, your choice of beans (refried, pinto or black), meat (chicken or beef), then fixings (lettuce, sour cream, guacamole, and salsa). This thing is massive and it better be for $ 10.77 (tax included). But man that carne asada hits the spot when I took my first bite. The meal comes with a bag of chips and you can take home as many plastic containers of salsa that you want to fill up and bring in your bag. Just do it discretely because it’ll look funny when you go away with 50 containers of salsa. I mean, it’s not like I’ve had experience with this. Anyways, the prices are a bit steep, but what isn’t here? The chips aren’t great, El Nido has better. The bar area always smells like dirty soap water and I have no clue how people can stand it.
Not my fav place for Mexican in the tri-​valley but it’s conveniently located near work so I’ll take what I can get when I’m short on time and have a carne asada craving.

Perhaps I wouldn’t be so frugal with my stars if they start giving reasonable portions of the food. Sure we’re trying to cut back on most things due to recession but not when the customer is paying money for food not through barter trade. Since this is the closest Mexican Bar/​Resto in town, this is where I go to satisfy my Taco Salad cravings. I think for more than a year, they stopped serving Lenguas, and I heart Lenguas! That’s when my other two stars went missing.
I prefer not to sit on the booths near the bathroom. It always smells like somebody didn’t make it to the bathroom and had a ghostly throw up.

El Balazo has become very average in terms of a neighborhood bar. The people I come here with still make it a great experience but overall it’s slipped quite a bit. I used to work on the other side of Iron Horse Trail and lived about two miles down the street. I’d somehow find myself at El Balazo 4 – 5 times a week. I used to go for Monday Night Football, Tues $ 1 beers (no longer exists), Thurs $ 3 margaritas, then maybe once on the weekend just to party. I was fresh out of college and all I had to come up with was my $ 625 split in rent plus a couple of bills. One month I almost didn’t even do that! Almost not making rent because of excessive drinking was my first reality check since moving out.
At the beginning of this year, I brought my friends here for dinner after a snowboarding trip. I had gotten them pumped up about the food but unfortunately they seemed a little underwhelmed after the meal. The food was just really sloppy, Mexican food’s supposed to be sloppy but this was beyond that. The salsa at the salsa bar was watery and didn’t have much body to it. And the $ 9+ price tag on the burrito sure didn’t help. Also, it was Saturday night at 10:30pm and it was a ghost town at the bar area.
The next time I stopped by after that was on a Thurs night for an old coworker’s last day. There used to be so many people on Thurs nights that you could barely walk. Now I feel like I need to bring tumbleweeds so I can roll them down the aisle. Other than the attractive blond/​redhead bartender, El Balazo doesn’t really have much to put up anymore. I’m sure it’s probably still doing well during lunch, but for partying it seems people have moved to the other option down the street.

Who ever in their right mind would think this place serves Mexican food has some problemos big time!
Whoa… OK I don’t even know where to start with this one, El Barfo here served me up three rolled tacos over the shittiest Mexican rice I’ve ever tasted in my life them smothered them with guacamole, sour cream, cheese and onions that just made the tacos the soggiest nasty tasting things ever! The sad thing is I ordered a flauta! A flauta where I come from is a deep fried smaller burrito made with flour tortilla and beef inside, not three rolled tacos made of corn tortilla??? Where the F did these supposive Mexicans come from? I’m so so confused?
Living as a Hispanic and growing up with grandma’s homemade Mexican food shit, even my moms homemade Mexican food I know what I should be getting and this place isn’t serving it up right at all. Sorry El Barfo but ill never go back to your tasteless food ever again!

El Blahhhhhh should be the name of this place. I never had liked their food for some reason and never new why until yesterday. No taste and overpriced. It has been around for a really long time (somewhere around 15 plus years in SR) and when they first opened I’m sure it was good but man can they drug anymore people in a city to think it is good food.
Thanks to Man vs Food, the host got me craving a burrito from this area (the bay) and I was so so bummed. Living in SD I became so accustom of having my burritos so simple and full of flavor walking into this experience was a nightmare. Their rice was mediocre– ok, beans were poor, meat juicy with no flavor. What to do when you spend 8 bucks and your starving. You must trick your brain into liking it and eat it saying to yourself that it will get better. Oh well never again El Blahhhhhhhazo.

Had a very bad experience here, I can’t say all have this experience.
They have ‘value meals’, which include a vegetarian burrito, for 3.95, and they also have a regular burrito for 7.50. I asked the difference, they sort of tried to say the size? That makes sense. I was hungry, so I asked for the regular larger burrito. I watched them put the smallest amount of beans, rice and cheese. I’m pretty sure I paid for the large burrito, but got the amount of the value one. This made me very mad.
Then, we simply wanted to ask how much it cost to add chicken to a vegetarian burrito. We asked 4 people behind the counter, NONE seem to COMPREHEND ENGLISH. SO ANNOYING. THEN, they said they were ‘out of stock’ of vegetables. if you see you are low, ORDER more. Who is their purchaser?
Their chips were COLD and STALE, I didn’t even want to eat them. I usually eat a ton of chips at say Chevy’s, etc.
It’s really sad this place is so popular, I am just not impressed and can’t believe people would put up with their bad quality, and OVER– PRICED stuff. 11.95 for a non-​sitdown place? WAY to pricey.

This place is not an ideal place for night life. Not if you’re looking to dance the night away. First off, El Balazo is a weird concept. What’s up with this express food? You walk up to the counter, order your food, and they make it down the line. You pay and you self service the utensils, salas, drinks. Then you pick your seat. The entrée portion can be rather small depending who makes your plate. Sure the plate is large, but does anyone really want a pound of rice and beans and a measly 4″ taco? I don’t. The quality is hit or miss. Sure the carne asada, pollo asada and carnitas can be on hit, but other stuff like chicken mole is a total joke. Total self service but in a wanna be upscale setting. The dining room is pretty spacious.
The bar is practically half of the entire restaurant. Depending on the time of night, the music can be good or bad. We got there around 8 to grab some food and the DJ was horrible. You can tell he was a beginner trying to learn the ropes. Too much treble, shitty transitions between songs, and just totally wrong songs to transition to made me want to leave. I would have if it weren’t for my friend’s birthday celebration.
Later in the night (around 11ish) the main DJ took over and was mixing up some good tunes. The bar was kinda empty until about 11 as well, people popped in for a drink and then were on their way out.
Over all I had a good experience there, but I think that’s because the group of people I was with. I wouldn’t make a special trip to the valley to go to El Balazo unless it was a special occasion.

I have only been here after the restaurant close, so I cant comment on the food, but from what I hear its pretty good. I went with a few friends on a Friday night to have a few drinks, and I did not enjoy myself at all. As I walking to the door to show my ID to the bouncer, I heard two guys in front of me talking about being «white supremacist» that definitely made me even more aware of my surrounding.
After we got in a ordered a few drinks and they were actually pretty good, and were not expensive at all. That night they had a rock band doing a show. So if your in to the grimmey rock band bar, this place is for you but it just was not my scene.

If you’ve read my reviews you know that I tend to bandy about the word «crack» to describe something that is über tasty and guilt-​ridden. The Taco Salad at El Balazo is five star C*R*A*C*K people! It comes with a choice of meat or vegetarian, lettuce, beans, rice, guacamole, sour cream, cheese, and fresh salsa. They give you a choice of spinach, whole wheat, flour, tomato, or Jalapeño shell. Heck, the shell alone is my fat allotment for the day. And it’s HUGE. For $ 9.95 you get that meal and plenty to take home. I’ve had a few of these crack bowls and they are sooooo good. My favorite location is in San Ramon, and thankfully, none exist on the Peninsula (just 925 and 415 area codes). This is by far the best taco salad I’ve ever had.
I’ve also enjoyed the outdoor seating for drinks and appetizers. Equally yummy. Fast and friendly service. Get there well in advance of wherever you need to be next as it gets busy and the line stretches out the door.

I still find it odd that El Balazo is also a bar, but the few times I’ve been here, it’s only been for drinks, so who am I to complain?! I went here last Saturday for a drink and had a great time! The bartenders are nice and I love the patio area where you can smoke and drink. I haven’t had the food here since it’s been converted to a bar, but when it was just a burrito shop, I wasn’t a huge fan of their burritos. Their chips and salsa were really really good though. This is an okay place to get food, but a great place to get drinks!

Strange Days (or Nights)
This place reminds me of a Doors song — loud, dreamy, bizarre, and entertaining. For my latest visit this Sunday night I stopped in the bar for a drink (and got the fish taco platter from the attached restaurant) the crowd included:
— a group of four that owned the jukebox for the night playing everything from the Monkeys to numerous country songs. They sang along with every song and danced to about a third of them.
— A couple of 30 something woman glaring at everyone who walked in
— An old man with growths all over his face sitting at the bar on my right
— A late 20’s couple to my left that moved a chair from the other side of me to between me and them, even though no-​one sat there
— And a couple of locals in their 40’s at the end of the bar who had clearly seen better days
— 4 large, and drunk, men out on the patio
Oh, and the cute bartender, didn’t get her name.
Just a strange hour out of my life, strange yet entertaining.
The mixed drinks are served in pint glasses over lots of ice. So if you want a high quality cocktail, go elsewhere. If you want a pint of beer or a large, average tasting margarita, the prices here are decent.
For food in the bar you have to go to the dining area next door and order, get your own utensils, salsa, etc., and wait for your food. The food is ok. Actually the meats are cooked well and the portions are large sized. Beans, rice, and the other stuff is ok but bland. And the salsa bar, hmmm who knows what or who has been hovering over that mess. My teenagers like it here — even though they have had «real» Mexican food.
In the end, I think Jim Morrison would fit right in here.

Having lived most of my adult life in the east bay, El Balazo has been one of my my east bay taquerias of choice. Years ago, Balazo offered up an pretty awesome bang for your buck meal, especially comparing to neighboring restaurants.
But after living in Novato for a year and sampling many more taquerias in the bay area, I’m struggling to justify even giving them 3 stars. What went wrong? Quite simply, I found other taquerias that were as good if not better, and priced much lower than Balazo.
Balazo’s portions have stayed about the same, but the price has shot up to 7.50 for a regular burrito. Even still I doubt these guys are in any danger of going out of business, they are situated very close to the Bishop Ranch business parks and probably get tons of Lunchtime business.
The only reason I give them 3 stars over 2 is nostalgia, but I think eventually that will pass.