Taqueria El Torito

Not as fast of service as we’re used to but my fiancé and I loved the food! Not only healthy portions of food, but also Very authentic and accommodating staff. They went out of their way to make us feel at home. Seems to be how most folks here at St. Louis treat others!

For my money, this place has the best tacos in St. Louis –better than La Vallesana, better than Taqueria El Bronco. Their approach is as it should be: simple. No BS. Just a hot griddle, a large quantity of well-​marinated meat, a condiment bar, and a cooler full of Mexican beers.
This is one of the few places in St. Louis that doesn’t put chunks of pineapple in their tacos al pastor. This is important. Pork for tacos al pastor should be marinated at length in a pineapple-​and-​chili-​pepper marinade. If a place has to stick pineapple chunks in your taco, it means the meat didn’t marinate long enough. Taqueria El Torito does it right, without the pineapple chunks. Their tacos are best enjoyed in the outside seating area with a cold Victoria lager.

I dine out coast to coast and this is the worst !
Bad service mediocre food. Dinner with four friends. Only one who had $ 1.99 taco was happy. Way to many great Mexican choices in STL to ever go back here.

I wanted to try a new place on Cherokee, so here we go… I sat myself with my lunch mates at a booth. The place is typical, loud Spanish music, ESPN on the tv’s, staff works in English and Spanish. I ordered as soon as I sat down, and said it was a quick lunch, in Spanish. It took 20 minutes. Service was ho-​hum. I know, I’m not there for service.
Guacamole was standard, with good chips. Tacos al pastor were on the dry side but portion was decent. Rice and beans were decent.
Glad I went so I can stick to my other Cherokee standards.
Couple of side notes, it’s attached to the Mexican grocery store. Also you can order tacos from the front a la carte.

Typically I go to La Vallesana when I’m on Cherokee, but I had a
voucher for here, so my sister, niece and I headed on in. The first issue was that they sat us at a table accomodating 10 people. This was way too large, so we asked to be moved. Our waitress seemed really new or just inexperienced. She forgot to even write down our order of guac, so we had to ask for it again. When it came, it was not good. Very salty and it seemed like maybe it had sour cream in it? I ordered chorizo tacos, and these were very good, and the only reason I give them 2 stars. I love chorizo and theirs was delicious. My niece ordered a cheese and chicken enchilada but ended up with two chicken instead. My sister’s order was correct. The worst part of this experience was when we got our check. I gave the girl my phone for the voucher and she came back and insisted that it was an invalid voucher. I assured her it was good. She went back and this time it worked. We had around a $ 10 balance to pay and my sister gave them a $ 50. They didn’t have change for it and the owner (I assume it was the owner, anyway) acted all put out that he had to go next door to the grocery store to break it.
Overall verdict: not impressed and will resume my trips to La Vallesana or other Cherokee restaurants.

This is some of the best Mexican food in the stl metropolitan area. Nice selection of imported beers and tequilas. very friendly hospitality. And excellent shrimp cocktails

Amazing chilaquiles! Great service. Great food. Authentic atmosphere. Love it! Highly recommend this place if you are looking for great food near downtown. The breakfast is top notch!

I will never go to another Americanized Mexican restaurant again. I’ve seen the light. This place is amazing. They give you two salsas-​both incredibly hot-​one a red and the other a salsa verde. Chips were thicker and crunchy.
We also ordered the guacomole-it’s average but topped with pico de gallo. We ordered four types of tacos-​barbacoa, carnitas, carne, and the big winner-​Al Pastor. They were so tender, the pork melted in your mouth. Each taco, priced at 1.99, was topped with a hefty amount of onion and cilantro.
Service was friendly, if not a little aloof.

I have a tip for all you Unilocalers. If Mark P reviewed a place and recommended something, just get it, even if you are eying something else, just get what he wrote about and you will not be sorry.
The tacos here are amazing, hands down the best place on Cherokee Street, no debate. I had the Barbacoa, and the El Pastor. Huge portions served on a double corn tortilla with onions and cilantro. Probably the best tacos I have ever had. The meat was so flavorful, I could rave for days and want to go back tonight.
The margaritas were wonderful, the service was wonderful, and I will never eat Mexican anywhere else on Cherokee Street again.

I met a buddy for lunch Friday.
Chips and two kinds of salsa were served right away. I thought the green one was avocado, so got a big bunch of it on a chip. Holy crap in a handbag. .. it was not avocado. It was the HOT stuff.
Glad a big glass of water was at the ready.
We both ordered tacos. They’re $ 1.99 each.
She got an al pastor and an asada — with no cilantro. And they delivered it perfectly.
I got an asada and a barbacoa, both very meat-​filled with onions. Lots of cilantro sprinkled on top of both.
I stuck with water. She got a watermelon juice, which she said was divine.
The tacos were A-​OK. Service was very attentive. $ 4 for lunch is terrific.
The outdoor patio is beautiful and covered.

Absolutely divine! Came here for lunch with Patt C. yesterday. I got the watermelon fresh fruit juice & 2 tacos (al pastor & asada). The juice was very fresh & delish! A couple of ice cubes made it taste cool. The al pastor taco was spicy, but not incredibly spicy. The asada taco was delish & not very spicy. For $ 1.99 per taco, this fits perfectly for my budget. Service was impeccable, & the ambiance was awesome. Warning, they put a separate entrance to the restaurant from the supermarket. A bit confusing though.

Taqueria El Torito is restaurant located inside the Mexican grocery store called El Torito. This place serves up excellent authentic Mexican food that’s better than most of the other restaurants on Cherokee Street. One could easily overlook this place if they didn’t know it was there, but the addition of the outdoor patio area has helped boost recognition. You might be able to enter from the patio, otherwise enter through the grocery store where you’ll find it on the left. The décor is nothing special here, but it has a simple charm that’s a little rough around the edges.
Complementary chips come with red and green salsas that are delicious and flavorful with a nice spicy kick. If you don’t like spicy, then you’re probably out of luck here. At lease you can munch on the chips which are fresh and crispy.
I’ve tried a variety of things including the carnitas and barbacoa tacos. These scrumptious babies are served traditional Mexican style with meat, chopped onions and cilantro on top of double corn tortillas with a lime on the side to squeeze over it all. My mouth is watering just thinking about these juicy and flavorful treats. Most recently I tried the huevos rancheros or eggs covered in sauce and cheese served on top of a corn tortilla. It came with three to an order along with beans and rice on the side. They even gave us a batch of freshly made warm corn tortillas on the side, perfect for scraping up the leftover egg yolks with beans and rice. Talk about a great breakfast… it’s also good for a hangover!
I’ve never had a problem with service here, but no one really seems to be in a rush. This is the perfect place to eat before loading up on some Mexican grocery supplies or just exploring Cherokee Street. Oh… and don’t forget to have some horchata; it’s quite good here!
5 stars when compared to other St. Louis Mexican restaurants.

Torito is everything you can ask for in a taqueria. This is a place where the locals go, and that’s when you know the food is going to be amazing. The set up is just like what I was used to back in the Hispanic neighborhood where I lived in Chicago. I came in on this day to order the perfect hangover soup, Menudo. And I’m not talking about the band damnit! I’m referring to the traditional cow tongue soup (crowd goes EWW). The soup was unreal, it literally blew my mind how perfect the portions were and the fact they gave you a side of onions/​cilantro and limes to put in there. It’s like the Mexican version of the PHO! It’s moments like these that make me love that I live in St Louis, MO. The fact that I can find a place like this to bring me the real authentic stuff. It’s more reason why Benton Park West is my favorite neighborhood hands down. LOVE IT here!

Never thought I’d say this about a Mexican restaurant, but my experience here today was TERRIBLE. Mainly due to service, or lack there of. The place was nearly empty, me a couple and a single man… it took 30 minutes to get my food. The Camarones Diabla were super salty and I was charged $ 8 bucks for a michelada! I don’t plan on returning, there are much better restaurants on Cherokee, with much better service, where I enjoy spending my money.

I hate to be this negative this close to the holidays, but Holy Frijoles! This place needs work!
Original destination of Tower Taco was closed (what’s the deal with their hours???) so we decided to try a new place.
We chose El Torito and as we approached there were some folk leaving with a «to go» styrofoam so I asked «How was it» and they were both «oh dude, it was real good».
Shoulda known better than to ask a Mennonite couple about Mexican food.
Anyway, I digress…
Menu is sparse. There are some combos and some entres that range from dirt cheap (1.89 taco) to expensive ($ 22.99 steak??).
I was looking for the standard Chimichanga and had to settle for a not too meaty «Steak Burrito» that left me seriously wanting and the bland beans and tasteless peas and rice didn’t get more than a sample.
Mama had 3 «carne asada» tacos that were only saved by adding the lesser evil of the two «salsas» that came with the free chips.
Speaking of which… one salsa is green and slightly oily and the hotter of the two but not really in a good way. However, the red concoction looked like it was poured right straight out of a ketchup bottle with no visible ingredients other than pureed red something. It tasted like battery acid (I’d accidentally licked after a bad Ray-​O-​Vac D-​cell leaked inside one of my toy rocket ships back in the early 70s, so I know…).
Aside from the mediocre food, in the midst of our meal the jukebox randomly came to life and played seriously loud mariachi and alternate Mexican disco music at odd intervals.
Total bill for 3 weak tacos and an extremely weak burrito + 2 diet Cokes –$ 16.57
Service was excellent so she got a $ 5 tip. Wasn’t her fault.
This Gringo won’t be going back for a re-​do. ‘Nuff’s nuff!

«¿Habla usted español?», the server asked us. «No,» we replied. Yep, this was the beginning of our experience.
Our server was a tiny little Mexican lady who didn’t know a lick of English. This was going to prove to be interesting considering everyone else in the place, you know, the whole other 3 patrons aside from ourselves, were Hispanic. Mi amigo Nick and myself had not taken Spanish since high school. He was able to be a little bit more comprehended to her than myself, which made ordering a lot easier.
The menus were in English. They had the number for the food listed right next to the menu items. Saying «número uno or numero dos» didn’t take much effort. When ordering my margarita (on the rocks, salted), that took a bit of extra work. I explained it to her the best I could. Nick, told her to «put it over ice’ — that clicked!
She brought me the best margarita I have ever had north of the border of Mexico. With its cute little umbrella, and lime, that added just to the quench. The tequila was top shelf without the top shelf pricing. It was made very strong too.
I have had margaritas in Mexico, and with every sip I tasted, I drank the authenticity as if I were back in the border town of Nuevo Larado or from my cruise to Cozumel. Only this time, it was in the middle of the United States!
Dinner…
I ordered a burrito and enchilada which comes with fried beans and rice. It’s one of the many combinations you can have for $ 7.99. There really isn’t anything to elaborate about my ordering other than it didn’t seem like it was Americanized. It was certainly well put together and had a little kick to it with the spices added in the beef. They put some sort of sweet sour cream on top to complete the order over the top of the enchilada and burrito.
Nick ordered some of their tacos. Once again, not Americanized. He said they had the exact consistency and make as if were getting it down South. He liked them so much that after his first order, he ordered more once we were even done with our meal.
Everything total was $ 35 or so. For drinks, our meals, and little extras.
Replay — food is authentic, drinks make you feel like you’re on the beach over looking the ocean, and you’ve got the people. The people make it all the better.
Enjoy your fiesta!

With the fanfare of the Cinco de Mayo street celebration going on, I decided to visit Taqueria El Torito. Today there were mariachis inside and it definitely wasn’t as empty as I’ve seen in the past.
I ordered a platter for two that included shrimp, chicken, beef, and nopales in a large simmering bowl. It came with tortillas and rice & beans. It definitely was a spectacle of a dish. It was huge. I could hear others ask their servers what we ordered.
The shrimp and cactus were good, the beef and chicken were just average. But the true benefit was in the value. 4 people could have easily shared this… and it only cost $ 27. The lunch hit the spot, although I could have used a bit more flavor.
Our server was new, and it didn’t seem that he had waited tables before. Ironically for this area, his Spanish wasn’t all that good.
Their red salsa tasted like marinara. I asked for cholula and my waiter said they didn’t have any (I took that as he didn’t know)… obviously they have some brand of hot sauce… they’re attached to a grocery store.

You can enter El Torito from the corner or go through the attached Mexican grocery/​meat market. Inside, you’ll see an extremely large room, that is scarcely populated and filled with yellow Formica booths that were probably bought from an old Subway Sandwich shop. Overall, the ambiance is missing and you may feel a bit isolated eating here.
The authentic tacos come with HUGE portions of meat with cilantro and onion. The biggest portion on Cherokee that I know of! The meat is tender, nothing wasted on the animal. So, if you are sensitive about eating various animal parts, this may not be your spot.
Recently, I ordered the mole pollo and for $ 6.99 I thought it was a BARGAIN, but the sauce (TONS of it) saturated two chicken legs (not in love with chicken legs). So, I was a bit disappointed.
The older Hispanic couple who own the restaurant and prepare the food spoke very little English and were inclined to answer «yes» when they didn’t understand. But, the man tried so hard that I just wanted to pick him up and squeeze him like a teddy bear. SO nice and sweet!
I’m not sure how often I will be back to dine in because I don’t enjoy floating in the middle of an over-​sized room with no people. But, if I want to order tacos «to go» and get the most for my $$ on the Cherokee business strip, THIS IS MY PLACE!