Mexicaans Rest Popocatepetl Haarlem

Really a great and a cozy experience. Good food and good service. A good tip will be to skip the guacamole since it’s fake and not natural.

Horrible food horrible service. Don’t waste your time or money cause you’ll be there all night and still be hungry and not eating the bad Mexican food.

I’m totally mystified as to why this place has such a poor rating on Unilocal.But perhaps this is because I’m absolutely biased towards garish colors, delicious food, and free chips and salsa. As soon as I saw the inviting bowl of the latter waiting at the door in attempts of luring in customers, I was ready to take my chances.
I LOVE Mexican. More specifically, I love the kind of Mexican you can get in the southern U.S. – it’s definitely the bastard offspring of what you can actually find south of the border – and yet, I adore it. I’ve had a hard time locating such cheap and questionable establishments in Edinburgh, so when I spotted this place on a brightly lit corner in Haarlem, well. Obviously we had to give it a go!
The chips offered here (the very same that lured us in at the door) are a mixture of spicy and plain tortilla chips, so I found myself with my eyes watering at some points and totally fine with others. Not a bad mix, and the salsa was just fine as well. Agsin, it’s not the quality that matters to me (although that is often a perk) but the FREENESS! However, I think my rating was secured when my half liter of frozen margarita arrived. And it was GOOD. It’s a hit or miss thing in the U.S. to get a margarita where you can properly taste the alcohol, and even more difficult to get one that doesn’t taste like it came from something like a slushie dispenser. This margarita was solid, and decidedly alcoholic. Be still my heart!
I have almost never found reason to complain about any form of Mexican food. It’s really not a hard combination: rice, beans, salsa, spices, veggies (and grilled meat if you’re a carnie). The burrito especial my husband and I both ended up ordering were delicious, not too fancy, but just seasoned enough to be totally delicious. Oh, man, did we leave with pregger bellies. So worth it!
The ambiance of Popocatepetl is also fantastic. The service was great (if a little slow at times), the restaurant decorations were fantastic (I spent a good minute being impressed by the art on the basement level with the loos – the mens’ and womens’ signs got a chuckle out of me), and the servers for no particular reason went through our dining room dispensing gigantic sombreros to the menfolk, which my husband proudly displayed (it was pretty dashing, really). The combo of good, solid food and drink with excellently flashy and over-​the-​top decorations, as well as good service and big hats, wins my heart over at this joint. If I ever found myself in Haarlem, I’d totally venture out for a big ol’ meal again!

Well folks, what can I say… Out of pure curiosity I wanted to see how the Dutch do with Mexican… I needed some spice, so thought I’d give it a go. Food was ok, service was poor. Nice servers, but way way understaffed the evening I was there. Shame on management.

Lively place with decent enchiladas (I had the vegetarian version). Wouldn’t mind going back to try something else.

Okay, so this was better than I expected it to be (my expectation for Mexican restaurants in Europe is very low) but of course still not great.
The food itself was good but you can’t really call it Mexican. First of all, chips and salsa came as we were placing our order. Normal in America, but impressive for Holland. We had a decent size basket of chips but the little tiny tiny container of salsa the gave us was only good for about 10 little dips and that was it.
I ordered chicken fajitas because I figured it would be pretty hard to mess that up. Well, when they came, it looked and tasted petty good, but was missing a few things and had some strange additions. First off there was not cheese! Secondly there was corn and cucumbers is with the grilled chicken peppers and onions… who grills cucumbers? The meat itself was good but as were the peppers and onions but there was far too few peppers and onions.
The dish came with guacamole on the side and while it certainly was not the best I ever had, I was happily surprised to see that it was green (a lot of times in Holland you see brown guacamole… yuck!) and tasted okay.
My friend ordered tacos. I was considering this option too but it only came with two tacos which I thought would not be enough. When their dish came, they were two average size tacos, but on a big plate with beans and some salades so it actually would be an okay sized portion with all that extra stuff.
In conclusion, an okay meal just not really Mexican.

Went here a couple of months ago … primarily due to the special that was advertised outside — € 6 for an enchilada plate or something like that. Unfortunately the plate ended up not being appetizing, and small — can’t remember why — but we ordered some other, larger dishes. The service was EXTREMELY slow, but they were quite busy. I think it took 15 minutes to get water, chips and salsa, and to order… and I’m just not used to that (coming from America).
The food and drinks ended up being ok, not great. But I think the reason why everything was just ok at Popocatepetl is the same reason all American-​style food is just ok everywhere in the Netherlands… because they take Mexi-​cheese and replace it with Dutch cheese (NOT THE SAME), and they take beef and replace it with Dutch beef (NOT THE SAME), and then they take out all the spicyness (NOT AS GOOD), and voila! you have a Dutch-​Mexican restaurant.
If you’ve had Mexican or Tex-​Mex in America, in a good restaurant, then this would be the bland version of it. It’s not terrible, it just has no spark, no spice. I want my Mexican food to bite back a little, but maybe I’m a snob about it after living in Texas. ??
Oh well, probably won’t go back just because enchiladas are dear to me and I don’t want my memory of them to be bland.