Wow wow wow! Me Tierra has become a regular for me and my family. I also go to there often for…read morebusiness meetings or just to hang with friends. If you're looking for that Old School traditional, family Mexican taste, you're not going to quite find that here, you can find it but you got to drive all the way to places like San Francisco, Pittsburg California or elsewhere far away. But what you will find is a delicious alternative. Their rice is very delicious they're beans all versions of them are also very well done. Their sauces are quite good and even though they don't do my favorite which is ground beef enchiladas, all the other versions of them I have come to love. Next time you're driving through Valley Springs Calaveras County check them out. Mi Tierra is a refreshing taste of delicious Mexican food!

This is so dam nasty this ain't Mexican food!! Learn how to cook! Quality is horrible!! This is…read morethere shrimp cocktail I have more juice then anything!!! Highly recommend not to ever come here specially with the prices compared to the food quality

I kept hearing about Rivera's Restaurant from people in the community where we just moved, so I…read morethought I would check it out. This place is an authentic Mexican restaurant, unpretentious and spacious. The chips and salsa are just like the ones I ate while traveling around Mexico over the years. I ate one of the best taco salads I have had in a long time. It was packed full of flavors because it was not too spicy, but I was able to enrich the meal with the homemade chili salsa. The mix of Mexican music and excited football announcers from the tvs gave the place a festive, party atmoshere. So, it is not a quiet date place. The owner, Pedro, is a contientious, hard-working man who has made me feel truly welcomed to this community. I will be back often!

The taco truck parked next door has better food. I can't believe that they call their food…read moreauthentic Mexican food. I won't be back and I will not recommend this restaurant to anyone.

Great lunch: Haws Dawgs (dog, onions, BBQ sauce, cheese plus Diet Coke and fries with ranch…read moredressing. Excellent customer service, excellent food, and excellent prices. Thanks for another great experience.

There is a new owner. A skinny middle aged woman who had the customer service technique of a pit…read moreviper. We ordered the prime rib rare and it came tasty and tender but the entire exterior meat was medium well and only the interior was not rare but medium rare! When we confronted her with 40 years meat cooking experience she basically implied FY and stalked off. Now if you ask for one iota more sauce, dressing, horseradish or sour cream they charge you .75 per item! Unfortunately we took our outrage on the waitress with zero tip! However during our entire meal experience the wait staff congregated together past the cash register and gossiped! Minimal checking on customers no conservations unless they already knew you! Worst experience ever! I've lived here 23 years and have dined here since the original owner! Never Again! Not giving them another penny!

We had set up with the restaurant in advance to have a LARGE group (47 people) eat lunch at El…read moreTorero yesterday. I didn't look at my watch, but I believe they opened a little early to accommodate our group. They got us seated and they quickly jumped into action. Our chips and salsa came out immediately and someone was taking our drink orders right away. So let me just say, their tortilla chips are my new favorite of any restaurant, anywhere. They are obviously made from flour tortillas and between the 4 people at our table, we ate 3 baskets of them! My wife and I both ordered the combination plate #19 which is a chimichanga and a burrito with rice and beans. She ordered hers with the sauce on the side because she's not a fan of overly spicy sauce. The sauce was actually perfect, and she ended up putting the sauce on her chimichanga. Neither of us could finish our food, possibly because we ate so many chips, but trust me, the food was just as amazing when we heated it up at home for lunch today. This restaurant is over 50 miles away for our group and I can 100% guarantee we will make the trip again next year. By the way, I love how the restaurant is decorated. It has a very authentic vibe.

I have passed this place a couple of times, but today I decided to check this place out. First of…read moreall, the chips were very delicious and crunchy. The salsa was yummy and quite mild. The chips were crunchy and warm. The servers were very nice and attentive. Everything tasted good, but nothing out of the ordinary. The restaurant was clean and had a nice traditional environment.

Great food and super service. All dishes are well prepared and ample. The do a great job of…read moreaccommodating children. You will be happy with this restaurant

Love this place. We come here all the time. But tonight we order two soups and an entree. One soup…read morewe got mild and the other we got med. Normally we get medium and hot. The mild was as hot as the med and the med as hot as probably the Thai hot. Luckily we did order mild for my daughter's entree. It's kind of disappointing. It will probably be a long before we go back.

I'm hesitant to leave a review because we love this place sooo much. The owner & his wife ate the…read morekindest people. The food is the best around and it's price fairly. The beans are authentic and the burritos are worth the price and delicious. Green enchiladas.. so tasty. And the view across the street is priceless.

Best taco truck in valley springs, food is delicious owners are very nice, recomended.read more

I recently found this place and it's DELICIOUS! This is by far the best Mexican restaurant in the…read moremountains. I'm from the Bay and my expectations for Mexican food are high, even so, El Mescal surpassed. I get tacos, rice, and beans. It's nothing fancy. Simple foods and the quality is amazing. The rice and beans are some of the best I've ever had and the chicken is flavored well with good cuts. The service is also very decent and each time I go, the waitress is so nice and attentive. This place is a gem!

It's good priced and portions are great but I feel like everything tastes very bland and the same…read more I wish their food had more flavor!! Nice inside and very nice people though!

I don't know how many times over the years we've driven past Good Friend Chinese Restaurant while…read moreen route to the foothills and high country, and nearly every time we'll make a comment. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's pithy, sometimes it's out of curiosity, but usually it's in the context of "who would come to Valley Springs to find good Chinese food?" Well, recently we were returning from yet another trip in the Sierras and were kind of hangry, so we decided to settle it once and for all, and give Good Friend a try. We arrived relatively late - it was only 7:30pm, but they close at 8:30pm, so their dinner rush was well past and they were winding down. This is important. Throughout our meal, the staff could not have been friendlier or more efficient. They were not annoyingly so, but they didn't miss a beat. The food in the buffet stations was starting to run out. The sushi selection had dwindled down from what was probably a much larger offering, although what remained still looked pretty fresh, not old and tired, and in fact, the few pieces we had were much better than typical Chinese buffet sushi. (I know that sounds like faint praise, but the sushi was actually decent.) The green mussels that were next to the sushi did look a little dry around the edges so we gave those a pass, but in fairness, mussels start to look that way pretty quickly, so they may not have been out very long. The hot and sour soup was much better than expected. If I hadn't crammed so much food into my pie hole already, I would have had another bowl of it. It does seem kind of weird to eat a Chinese soup with a Western soup spoon, but when in Rome, I guess. Also surprisingly good was the beef & broccoli, jalapeno pork, and the ribs, keeping in mind again that it was close to closing time and most of the ribs in the tray didn't look that great, but I managed to find enough that were meaty and moist to satisfy my jones for them. Next time - and there will probably be a next time - I'll pass on the stuff that is battered and fried: chicken, frog legs, tempura-style veggies. The battering was soft, not crisp. I don't know if that's because they'd been sitting and cooling in the steam table or if it's the batter mix. They weren't bad, just not how I like my fried stuff. The fried chicken actually tasted pretty good other than the soft coating, but I was reminded after eating the frog leg that frog's legs don't excite me to eat as much as the idea of eating frog's legs. Too much work for too little payback, and frog's legs can sometimes taste a little fishy. That's ok if you're eating fish, but when the meat is more like chicken, fishy taste is just odd. There were a few items that, earlier in dinner service, were probably much better. The dry fried string beans (labelled as "sauteed string beans") were really in need of replacing although we managed to pluck half a dozen of them out that looked ok, and there were a couple of other mixed veg trays that were past their prime as well. We also gave a pass to the crab legs, but not on account of their appearance. We just didn't feel like working that hard to get at the meat. All in all, we were pleasantly surprised. It was not the best Chinese food we've ever had. OTOH, it was FAR from the worst. Even more important, we agreed that we would have no problem going back. Is it a destination place? Absolutely not. But we definitely added it to our list of places to eat while we're on the road and want something we know will be good enough. Again, that sounds like it could be faint praise, but there's a ton of places out there for which we would not say the same. I'll add for context that the 4-star rating is relative to what I'd expect in Valley Springs. If Good Friend Chinese Restaurant were in, say, Richmond or San Francisco or San Gabriel, for instance, there's no way I'd rate them at 4 stars. More likely it'd be in the 2-3 star range in those areas. But considering the location and expectation, Good Friend is not a bad option. All the cars lined up in the Taco Bell drive-through should have gone across the highway to Good Friend! It also gave the "divorced dads with kids for the weekend" vibe.

First time trying Good Friends - my spouse grew up eating here with his parents/grandparents…read more We stopped in for dinner on our way back from the Airport. We were greeted & seated as soon as we entered the building. It was not super busy but had a good amount of people dining in. They offer a full menu as well as their buffet. We had the buffet; and it had a wide variety of food options. Their beef broccoli was delicious. I would defiantly go back and eat here again.