Costa Vida

They have good food, but if you want something much better go to café rio! They have way better food for the same price!
Costa Vida’s service is poor. They basically ignore you. During my visit, I went to get a drink, and yellow-​brown yucky stuff came out. I told someone who worked there, and she just glared at me and walked away. Later when I came back for a refill after my meal, it still wasn’t fixed.
Costa Vida is a good place to eat, it’s a nice restraint, but the service isn’t very great, and if you want something better, just go to café rio. 3 stars fits this resteraunt.

I love the shrimp tacos served with black beans and rice. Staff seems to turn over a lot, but they are always friendly.

Like Café Rio & Chipolte but better. Really good quick service Mexican. I recommend it. Flavors good. Selection good. Service good. Not fancy but very good experience.

The food here was very good and service was exceptional. We were visiting Zion National Park and stayed in St. George. This place had amazing food and great ambiance. The people was also very friendly. I’m a vegetarian and I had questions about the food but they answered it with patience. The tortillas very made fresh, right in front of us. I loved the variety of salsas but the mango salsa was my favorite. The nachos with the cheese sauce was absolutely amazing! My friend loved their mango chicken. Great place over all. Highly recommend it!

I go in there at least twice a week, it’s always immeasurably clean and they are always ready for anything. Best Mexican fast food in town!

Stopped by for lunch because I love their salads. Salads seem to be a better deal than the burritos. They put tortillas in the bottom of the salads too so after you’re done eating the lettuce and toppings, you roll up the tortilla with the beans and rice and you have a burrito. You get the best of both worlds.
I ordered the Raspberry Chipotle Chicken salad. It includes tortilla topped with lime rice, black or pinto beans, lettuce, pico de gallo and guacamole along with your choice of dressing: Tomatillo Ranch Dressing, Cilantro Lime Vinaigrette, or Sweet & Smooth Mango Dressing. The ranch is my favorite although didn’t use much because of the Raspberry dressing already on the chicken salad.
Wife always orders the Sweet Pork Salad, her favorite. We both ordered the small size which is plenty big for us, although just a dollar or two cheaper than regular size.
This place gets people through the line fast. Only complaint on this visit was that every single table was dirty and messy, even the floor was littered with trash and food. Not clean at all, but the food still tasted terrific.

Have been to this location as well as several other locations while traveling. My experiences been very poor as far as taste goes. The food is a flavorless and bland. I would not recommend this place. The recipes leave a lot to be desired in my opinion.

Ordered the tacos and for my kids the kids quesadillas. Both were shiny and dripping with oil when they arrived. Totally overpowered the maybe-​good insides of the tacos. Advised and showed the staff and they acted extremely annoyed. Unfortunately my review for the Costa Vida on the other side of town is one star as well.

Raspberry chipotle is to die for. Well, it’s really good anyway! and YES, the daily specials are a GREAT value! I get the mango chicken salad almost every time I go. This is a regular stop for my family.

OMH. First time in a Costa Vida will be my last time in a Costa Vida. Have these employees ever stepped foot into a Café Rio (what I view as their main competition)? Café Rio could have served 300 people in the time that it took for me (I was about 15^th in line) to order two kid quesadilla’s and chips and salsa. I think that is the slowest service I have received in a long long long long time. It wasn’t for the lack of employees either. I would say ordering is like controlled chaos. You know what you want but when you say what you’d like it like all hell has broken lose or it’s like it’s their first day on the job. All. The. Way. Down. The. Line. Yep last time a step foot into any Costa Vida restaurant.

Just ate here and the food was good but the service was slow and not at all courteous bathrooms and dining area under stocked and dirty. Seemed that the owners were there but they did not seem to care at all about the poor service.

Just a step above Taco Bell… But ok

This place is similar to Café Rio, only I think it’s better. Parking is better, seating is better, and food is a little better too. I love the raspberry nachos. The drinks are a little flat though, which is always disappointing. Still, the food is good.

I passed this place on the bus to school everyday and today i tried it. I had no expectations but it turned out to be really good. My son had a chicken quesadilla and a cinnamon tortilla, and it was so good… However, The fountain drinks tasted like chemicals. Each one, even the sprite.

Living in another state, I was accustomed to Chipotle for somewhat ‘upscale’ Mexican ‘fast-​food’ & thus disappointed & surprised that there wasn’t a Chipotle here in the St George area.
I was very happy to discover Costa Vida last week, driving by it while hungry and making a U-​turn to give it a try.
If you’ve been to a Chipotle, you pretty much know what to expect from Costa Vida, though the menu is different enough that you might like one thing over another (I get one particular thing at Chipotle that I like a lot — I have not found it’s equivalent at CV).
At CV, I ordered a double (2) cheese enchilada, and a large cheese nachos (no meat), plus a large fountain drink. Total bill was $ 15.84, and it was too much food even for big ol’ hungry me. Each entrée is approximately $ 7
I was extremely happy to find that they had a Horchata dispenser in the fountain drink section! I got addicted to Horchata while dining in Mexican joints in California — it’s rice or almond milk, with cinnamon. Great stuff, especially down around here when it might be 110 degrees outside, and it’s wonderful that it’s self-​serve/​all you can drink. That alone will get me to Costa Vida frequently.
I like the fact that they also had Mexican soft drinks like Jalisco in bottles, & the Mexican Coca-​Cola, which contains real sugar instead of the synthetic stuff used by Coke in the USA.
The cheese enchiladas were OK, but not a lot of flavor to them. I did order them ‘hot’ in terms of spiciness, and while I joked with the food maker about Mexican Hot vs Utah Hot & she confirmed that the spice level would only be ‘Utah hot,” the reality is that I didn’t detect any spice heat at all. Being a vegetarian & thus not being able to order beef or chicken enchiladas, I guess it’s my fault that cheese ones didn’t have any real flavor to them. Next time, I’ll have to ask them to put some onions in with them or something, or better yet, I’ll try something new, though as a vegetarian, I know I’m limiting my flavor profile options.
The nachos were very good, though they weren’t too generous with the guacamole or sour cream, there was plenty of cheese on them.
Next time I go to Costa Vida (probably today or Saturday!) I will definitely order the nachos — either a large size as my meal, or a small size and then try something else on the menu as my main entrée.
I do like how they serve your food in aluminum foil pans — easy to recycle, I guess.
I have not been to their other St George location — wasn’t even aware of it, but the one basically in the strip mall off of Red Cliffs Drive is brand new & very nice.
Atmosphere is very casual — they have several LCD TVs up on the walls, which were showing Olympic events on the evening that I visited the place. I’m not sure what’s on the TVs normally, but the TV volume was off and 1980s pop/​rock music was being played. 8PM on a weeknight & it was fairly full of high school kids plus young families.
I think I saw they had a wifi signal, but don’t remember if it was open or encrypted.
Workers were all pretty young, and seemed happy + friendly.
The chain’s web page is

Unfortunately, this location is really terrible. An easy takeout order was missing several things requested, the tortilla was hardly cooked, the meat was inordinately unseasoned and the price was higher than competitors.
It looks like you should skip both the Costa Vida’s in St. George. If you’re travelling through stop at the one in Cedar City. It’s actually pretty good.

This business is new to St. George. I thought I’d add it to Unilocal in hopes that people would give it a try.
Unfortunately, the sister location on Bluff St., hasnt tasted as good as other Costa Vida resturants ive been to in Salt Lake City. Maybe since they are new, they’re still figureing things out?
Good luck, and let us know what you think.