El Callejon

I have mostly only been in the cantina for happy hour but have dined in the restaurant part a couple years ago. The chips and salsa are fantastic! Chips are warm and fresh, the salsa is full of flavor. Not too happy about the margaritas as the sweet and sour mix tastes a bit funny to me. I usually go in for happy hour and enjoy some Mexican draft beers. This place is a winner for the happy hour, great chips and salsa and low priced beers. Service has been a little inconsistent but most often acceptable. The cantina is small and always packed, it can take a while for the server to make their rounds.

Not sure what some of these people are talking about but in my experience, El Callejon… particularly the one that was in Encinitas has the best pico de gallo, the best guacamole and absolutely the best carnitas… AND who else serves cream of cilantro and cream of chipotle soup?! They may not have the best street tacos but there are plenty of other places to go for that. Go to El Callejon for all the other stuff. I miss that place!!!

Last night was their last at this location. Closed down.
Thanks El Callejon-​a lot of great memories!

This place is awful. Service and food are terrible. Booked a table on open table. When we showed up they didn’t have our reservation. The teenage girls running the hostess stand said they «forgot to log on to open table» to get the reservations.
After 20 minutes they finally seated us outside in the freezing cold. When we asked for a heat lamp they said there weren’t any more. We moved tables on our own but it was still very cold. No one brought us kids menus or silverware.
Finally took our order 30 mins after seating us and then proceeded to ignore us for the next 30 mins until they brought the soup which was sour and looked like someone threw up on it. 20 mins more passed with no entrees. At this point everyone was freezing and my kids were melting down. Asked the waiter to cancel our order and Bill us for the soup. No apology — nothing. Again the waiter disappeared. Finally just left. AVOID!!!

Piss poor service. Stood at the hostess stand for 5 minutes just now. Three people stared at us and didn’t even say hi. Guess they don’t want to earn our money or show us what they could offer. I would recommend you stay away. Go up the street to Casa de Bandini for better service and probably food. This place is a utter joke and disgrace.

Second time eating lunch here, first being memorable and about a year prior, while in area for business meetings.
It was Taco Tuesday today and my associate had Cochinita Pibil tacos and they were reported as being very good!
I had carnitas, one of my favorite dishes and it was very good as well.
Of course, I shouldn’t miss my favorite part which was the chips and salsa provided to the table as we decided on our main meal. The salsa is a roughly chopped and great tasting version, which I could not stop eating, even after I finished my carnitas plate…
All in all, great place and highly recommended!

Why 5 stars? Because the atmosphere and food was great. Aside from taco Tuesday, the price is a little high but I think you expect that with the overall ambience. The bar side is really cool, Its bees rumored that Taco Lu in Jacksonville FL (my absolutely favorite taco joint) modeled their bar off this one. The have hundreds of Tequilas to choose from so make sure to ask the price before you point and say «I’ll take that one».

The venue is nice. Quasi-​mission style meets a pastelish tornado. Ample seating with (in functioning on Saturday afternoon) outdoor options remains largely unfilled.
I order tacos de pescados… Aka grilled red snapper tacos. $ 15. Iced tea. 10 minutes later, I call one of the staff over and ask if chips and salsa would be possible. 5 minutes later they appear. The salsa is good… Pico de gallo heavy, and relatively fresh. Chips are just okay. 10 minutes later tacos arrive. Black beans and rice on the side.
Now… I’m not a food critic… I love fish and order it frequently, and everywhere. This fish is mediocre… By the standards of non-​coast dwellers. Contrasting it to the quality level of other spots I’ve savored and sampled over the last week in the greater San Diego area… Its drab, and less than drive through quality. Combined with tortillas that arrived blown out… I’m bummed! The inflated prices for a lunch entre definitely do not translate to quality.
Iced tea refilled one time in the 40 minutes I was here.
Soooo… In conclusion…
IF you are in the area with in-​laws you secretly loathe… Come here for dinner! All the charms of a decent socal Mexican joint without the pesky quality or attention we take for granted!

We had a great dinner to night while in town for the Bing Crosby race season. My wife and I came in with three other couples and have never had better margaritas or a chicken dish called Punta Sascre. Enjoyed our time and will be back soon!

I’ve been coming to El Callejon with my wife for 17 years. There are two reasons we keep coming back (and making a 30 minutes drive to get there). Really good chips and salsa, and great margaritas. Probably the best margaritas I’ve had.
The food is mostly good as well. Frankly, it can be hit and miss on the menu. Some items are great, and some just ok. Likewise, some visits are better than others, but we’ve never been disappointed. That may be the margaritas talking.
The chips are made in house using in-​house tortillas. I believe they have a «machine» in the kitchen. So the tortillas are not hand-​made, but they are fresh off the roller. Oddly, they don’t make the best tortilla for just eating. They are good, but hand made it clearly better, and other tortilla factories make better as well, but they make, IMO, great chips. They are crisp, flakey, and tasty, and they make absolutely fantastic chilaquilles. The salsa is made fresh in house. It’s not hot, but you can ask for a red salsa which is made with chile de arbol which has plenty of spice.
The margaritas are made with the 5 ingredients you expect: tequila, lime, triple sec, ice and salt. No mix here (other than they pre-​mix the triple sec and lime to save time. The margaritas are way smaller than most big chains, but twice as strong. Two margaritas is all I can handle. It’s a good thing my wife does not drink.
On the food side, I stick with the fish dishes, tampiquena, or parrillada. Other dishes are fine, but those are my consistent favorites. The torta’s are good for lunch. The menu has not changed much in 17 years. That’s both good and bad. The food seemed more novel in 1998 than it does now.
Service can be slow when it’s busy. We always come early to avoid that. A few of the staff have been there for our entire 17 years we’ve been coming here. They are always friendly and make it a happy atmosphere. There are clearly a lot of regulars enjoying the place.

The worst Mexican food I’ve ever eaten in my life. This place is what kitchen-​nightmares dreams of. Shut your doors, you don’t rate to even call yourself a restaurant, let alone a Mexican restaurant. To think someone actually believes this is good Mexican food is just sad, the owner needs to know, this isn’t Mexican food. Whoever owns this place needs to have a real sit-​down with themselves, management and their staff and get their stuff together. Have some dignity and fix your place.
I’m embarrassed to say I came here, it’s honestly that bad. I cannot remember a time when I saw a restaurant so pathetically operated, had food so bad and was so let down. Every facet of this joint is terrible.
DO NOT GO HERE, EVER. Do not do it, don’t even think about it. Just DON’T.
I ran the Surfing Madonna Beach Run with a few friends and my wife, afterwards this was where the «free-​beer» was. Huge mistake. AND SHAME on the run organizers to make this the place too. I’m contacting the run and telling them how pathetic this establishment is, and nice touch with the coors-​light in a Dixie-​Cup. Pathetic. I was just going with the flow, trying to have a good time with friends and family, decided to not use Unilocal,not go to the places I always go and in no-​way ever thought I’d encounter such a crappy establishment. We even had reservations and it still took forever to get seated, the place wasn’t even full. This actually adds more fuel to my fire that SD has some of the worst Mexican food in the nation. Hands down I’d put this place as the winner of the worst I’ve ever seen or had. Please tell me of a worse place to get Mexican and I’ll actually try it.
The service was the worst service I’ve ever encountered in my entire life of eating out too. I can bet that this experience could never be duplicated or topped by any restaurant in SD, or the nation for that matter, TERRIBLE. Every worker I encountered seemed completely lost and didn’t have a clue what was going on, and they were rude. Nobody seemed to want to be there. Bad attitudes. The only person that seemed like they cared was the hostess.
The workers pouring beer were complete assholes, not answering questions, not helping anyone. And they seemed bothered to even have to look at you. Had pissed off looks on their faces, you’d ask a simple question «I DONT KNOW!!» Wtf? Is this really happening? You’d ask another simple question, a snide shrug of their shoulders and a dirty look. So bad.
Our server, who was completely lost & totally overwhelmed, wasn’t a bad-​guy, he just didn’t know what was going on. Seemed totally lost in it all, the place wasn’t even 100% full either. There was only 5 of us, and we were all easy going guests, we were all starved after our run and we would have eaten anything at this point, that’s if we ever would have gotten it, in the end we actually had to get our food to go after waiting 2+ hours for it, we had a train to catch back downtown. To think the food was actually bad, being that hungry is what really scares me.
It was a complete disaster to get anything done. A pitcher of margaritas and a few shots of tequila was just about the only thing that came out in decent time and of course after waiting 2+ hours we wanted to scream NO!!! We don’t want more tequila, CHIPS or margaritas for the 6^th time you’ve asked us in 20 minutes.
The margaritas are straight ASS, crappy sour mix, tons of gross ice, triple sec, watered down garbage; speaking of water, it’s the shittiest water I’ve ever tasted too, they should check into that, seriously shitty water. Something is wrong. Like toilet water wrong.
The chips although hot and fresh, were way too greasy, bad-​bad-​bad. The waiter takes our order and decides to simply skip me and my wife, everyone noticed it, we all couldn’t help but laugh, when he came back for the 100^th time to ask if we wanted more chips, we had to order then, and he seemed so pissed? He kept coming back to the table, and telling us, that our food was «on the line» and that food must have sat «on the line» for 2+ fricking hours, yes… that’s right 2+ hours no food, while we watched not 1 not 2 but 3 tables that sat down way after us get their food. It was a sad-​sad feeling for this restaurant. I mean this, everything about this place is just bad. Stay away.

I’ve been going to El Callejon since it opened and it is my favorite Mexican restaurant. My go-to’s are, the chips, salsa and gauc, of course. Then I have to decide among these great dishes; Cilantro soup, Puntas Oscar, and Enchilades Mole, best mole I’ve ever had.
Great atmosphere and they have entertainment on the weekends.

Extremely good house margs, which are very economical during their daily happy hour 4 – 7. Great vegetarian selection. Excellent tamales. Wonderful atmosphere.

Yet another off experience for lunch. Came in here on Friday 9÷11÷2015 for a late lunch. About 2:00pm. Picked a table in their patio section (most of the place is outside) with partial covering anyways.
The service was extremely slow and the place was empty! Maybe, 5 tables were taken at most. It took .47 minutes for my food to come out. Cheese enchiladas and a carne asada plate. Crazy!
No apology from my waiter either.
On top of this, the food was marginal at best. I have eaten at this location and more so at the one in Vista. I will go back to Vista but will not come back here. Too many other places in the area (Encinitas) who are serving quality Mexican food with much better service.

Excellent food especially the salsa
They make a killer margarita and the service was excellent
Parking was a bit of a challenge due to the time of day and they don’t have A/​C but do have multiply fans in the restaurant with the humidity tho it made the experience not a pleasant as I would have liked

I’ve been bugging the wife to come here for the ~3 years I’ve lived in Encinitas. She kept telling me that it wasn’t worth it. I should have listened.
I finally got my chance to check out El Callejon while the wife was getting her hair did in one of the salons upstairs. My brother-​in-​law and I waited downstairs watching the US Women’s Soccer team beat up on Japan. They had a very liberal happy hour. Nice prices on beers and margaritas.
The place was showing it’s age a little. Things weren’t super clean or super new. You could tell the bartenders didn’t have that fire in their bellies either. They had been working there a long time, knew the routine and had lost the love of giving great service. They were short and almost seemed bothered when we asked for another drink. If I were on vacation (as many people who frequent Moonlight Beach across the street are) and I tried this place I would consider this as one of the not-​so-​good meals we had while on vacation.
After the wife came downstairs, she brought the rest of the crew with her (sister-​in-​law and nieces). They wanted to get a bite. We grabbed a table and were presented with a hand written menu. No prices, no descriptions and barely legible. The hostess handed them to us and promptly took off back for the hostess stand. You could imagine the looks we gave each other at the table when she walked away. We all chuckled and said various versions, «WTF is this shit?» to each other. The waiter, who wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine, came over to explain they were missing quite a few members of the kitchen staff so they were serving a limited menu. Fine, I get that, but there could have been a better presentation of what the were serving that night. I consider that a management fail.
The food came and it was ok at best. It wasn’t worth what we paid at all. I’ve had MUCH better Mexican food from Juanita’s down the street. That place is a total local hole in the wall, way better quality, and roughly half the price.
I’ve said it before, I hate crapping on local businesses, but this place really needs to step it up.

We’ve been here a number of times over the years. Can’t beat their Happy Hour. 3pm-​6pm every day, even on Saturdays. $ 5 margs and a great happy hour menu. Remember HH is only available in the lounge areas which are not terribly large. Parking is limited also and the men’s restroom is literally outside the restaurant in an adjacent building. Otherwise this is a fine place to kick back with a little te-​kill-​ya (aka tequila).

This was the worst mexican food I have ever had in my entire life.
I ordered the carne asada taco platter, which is hard to mess up and my wife ordered the chicken enchiladas (Pictures posted). Two of the easiest dishes to make in a proper mexican restaurant. The tacos tasted like the meat was boiled instead of grilled and the only seasoning you could taste was black pepper. The enchilada sauce rivaled ragu spaghetti sauce and the rice was crunchy. I don’t think you can make a worse mexican meal if you tried to. Usually I would be very mad at a meal so bad but this meal made me laugh.
The service matched the food and I was never asked if I needed another beer or if we wanted anything else to eat. I had to flag down a waiter to take our order because our waiter could not be found.
The outdoor area was very loud and you have to shout if you want the person next to you to hear you.
Overall this place is so bad that you should try it for yourself so you too can know what truly bad mexican food is.
P. S. this guy below me must have been lost in the mountains for a week before eating at this place.

I like the open feel here and the food is decent. The bar is well stocked with all the beer and liquor you could want.
The host and the staff were very nice which is why I gave it four stars and not three
The food is good but not great. I found some of the dishes under spiced and under salted and some seafood slightly under cooked

Perhaps we ordered the wrong things but neither myself or my guy were impressed with El Callejon.
It was a Friday night and we were in the mood for Mexican. After scouring my Entertainment Book, we found a BOGO for El Callejon and decided to drive up to Encinitas to give it a shot.
I decided to try something different than my usual enchilada order and I got the Puntas de Pollo. Although I asked for all rice and no beans and the waiter seemed to acknowledge my request, my plate still arrived with beans. The chicken was a little bland and I had to add some salsa to give it a kick. I ended up making a couple little tacos and then brought the rest home so that I could fix them up with some more ingredients. My date ordered the chile relleno with cheese and wasn’t impressed either.
The chips and salsa were okay but I prefer my salsa to be blended rather than a chunky pico de gallo mixture that’s difficult to dip.
On the plus side, I loved my strawberry margarita!
In the end though, we were just happy that we had the BOGO offer because we wouldn’t have wanted to pay full price for such a lackluster meal. The prices are also outrageous for Mexican. The chile relleno was $ 16 and my chicken dish was $ 17. I feel like there are much better Mexican restaurants in San Diego at more reasonable prices.

Been here several times.
Great happy hour spot! They have awesome Margaritas, great chips and salsa. (it’s hard to find all 3 at one Mexican joint!
It’s a fun place to come with a group or to come with a friend and sit at the bar. Been here for lunches, happy hour and dinners.
Haven’t had a bad meal yet.
Bartenders have always been friendly and kept things flowing.