So much better than I was told. Awesome salsa. Great enchiladas and they have Climato juice for their michelada. All delicious. read more

Los Altos Restaurant - Mexican Near Me - Salinas, California

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Not impressed in the least. Went here for lunch today and was very disappointed in the taste and quality of the food. I had chicken tacos and the chicken was dry and tough. Tacos were small and the rice and beans were bland. It took forever to get our food and there were only 3 tables of customers. Now I know why the parking lot is always empty. With so many other good Mexican restaurants in Salinas, don't waste your time or money here. read more

Love stopping here on my way back to SC from SoCal. You get gigantic portions so I recommend splitting stuff. I always get the fajitas. Micheladas are also super proper here read more

Arrived at 7:45pm Friday night and received 2 delicious enchiladas, a super burrito and a corona-clamato in the biggest mug I have ever seen! OH, and did I mention the spicy shrimp surrounding the edge of my drink? The service was spot on, friendly, cheerful and attentive. And if that wasn't enough!! An 8 piece Mariachi band serenaded all while we ate. ( EIGHT PIECE! ) Thank you for the wonderful dinner, We will bring our friends soon! P.S. please please PLEASE check the bathrooms and keep them clean:( read more

Los Altos restaurant is it very inviting place with indoor and outdoor seating the waitress was very kind and my plates was reasonably the meal was amazingly feeling healthy and scrumptious. read more

Great food Great service,Great menu many foods to choose from,authentic Mexican food

Horrible customer service and horrible food. They took forever to seat us (party of 3). I orderes a tacos plate and they messed up. I didnt want salsa, when my plate gets here it has a bunch of salsa. Immediately I sent back my plate. When the "waitress" was bringing out my plate she was offering it to the wrong table. My tacos just went bland, every other piece of meat was burnt. Everyother bite was crunchy because of the burnt meat. Overall I just would never return. Plus the floors were filthy. Stay away. read more

Service sucks. Hasn't changed. Dirty place and snobby waitresses. First and last time I come here. I thought I'd give it a try after 10 years.. not worth it. read more

Los Altos is like visiting my friends who are originally from Mexico. The floor is dirty, lots of kids, the men sitting together drinking with smiles on their faces, furniture a bit shabby, and the women serving up the most DELICIOUS food ever. If you're looking for sanitized white person Mexican food, I don't think you will like this place. If you want the freshest most outstanding chile relleno you've ever eaten, then this is the place for you. read more

I stumbled onto this thoroughly unpretentious Mexican restaurant last year, while driving north on US Highway 101 to the Bay Area. It's right off the freeway on the way to downtown Salinas, in what was obviously once a chain diner such as Denny's. This is not upscale or even mid-scale Mexican "cuisine" or ":ambience." mercifully, it;s a California-style Mexican trattoria, complete with clutter for decor, slightly loud and low-fidelity Mexican pop music, a large-screen TV offering sports whether you are interested or not, and plenty of happy children, mostly speaking Spanish, running around enjoying themselves. The restaurant specializes in mariscos (Mexican-style seafood, with a Pacific Coast orientation) and basic Mexican staples made of beans and tortillas.. As a traveling vegetarian with a family. on a budget, I was happy to discover that Los Altos is a place that you can fill up on those basic Mexican staples inexpensively. Side orders of whole beans "a a olla", Mexican-style seasoned rice, corn tortillas and salad are generous, such that a satisfying plate made of the above ingredients set me back only $6 on my most recent visit The complimentary house-cooked salsa and chips are well made and served fresh. The salsa is rather mild (given my druthers, I prefer an uncooked, medium-hot "salsa cruda" with plenty of freshly chopped ripe tomatoes and/or tomatillos, onions, chiles, cilantro, and lime) but it's got complex flavors with lots of sautéed onions in thin strips within the chunky red sauce. I found this salsa pleasantly tasty dumped onto the freshly-cooked whole beans and/or rice or rolled into a taco. The salad is also unpretentious to the edge of being bland (featuring, as it does, chopped over-mild iceberg lettuce with a few threads of red cabbage and carrot for color) but they include a few hefty chunks of perfectly ripe avocado with this salad as well as a few decent, if not spectacularly flavorful, thin slices of a red beefsteak-type tomato. They serve, in the Mexican style, with several thick wedges of fresh lime This salad is not something I'd order on its own as a dinner salad, but it adds an enjoyable vegetable crunch to the beans, rice, tortillas, and salsa. The wait staff are friendly and helpful, but they do not hover, which is a plus in my estimation. It may well be that this restaurant keeps its prices ow party by not over-staffing, and the servers clearly work hard. To me, it's well worth the small inconvenience of asking them for more salsa or a chips-basket refill or for the check at the end of the meal; I'm happiest in restaurants, such as this one, where the table staff are NOT very intrusive in the name of being solicitous. If you appreciate basic, well prepared Mexican food the way Mexicans and Mexican Americans enjoy it, you might appreciate Los Altos Restaurant (which used to be called Jake's Cactus Cafe, apparently) as much as I do. read more

REALLY good!! Unlike some places, they didn't give me any grief about using a restaurant.com certificate, and the food would have been a bargain at the original menu prices. Friendly staff, huge portions, excellent food. I kind of wish I had ordered the camarones al mojo de ajo, as my wife's were outstanding, but my camarones playa azul were very good too, if maybe just a tad overcooked. My elderly parents, who are impossible to please, enjoyed what they had too! Dad had a ham sandwich, and mom got a very plain - but very good - and enormous - quesadilla. Music is a little loud, but the seater recognized that and offered us a table away from it. Mom was extremely cold, and there was a minor draft coming from the kitchen area (I think), but to be fair she is ALWAYS cold - even when it's 80+ outside! read more

I have ordered from this restaurant about 4 times. There are always customers there. I had a machaca with potatoes and it was excellent next time I ordered it with eggs it was very good. I went back for the machaca with potatoes and the potatoes were made a totally different way and the machaca was bland I ended up throwing part of it away. Today I ordered the chile verde burrito and it was not good at all. Otherwise it is fast,clean and they are polite. read more

Not good at all, I gave this place a second shot and still not good. The beef fajitas were overcooked, dry and burnt tasting. Rice and beans tasted like the bottom of a burn pan. I don't see how this place is popular, I guess everyone here is too drunk to taste the food. read more

Lousy! The rice tasted fishy. The beans were very Bland. The chips tasted like they were fried at least 24 hours ago. The chicken enchiladas were not too bad. Chile relleno was actually pretty good. read more

We just had beers, chips and salsa...the place smells like an old urinal cake. Chips and salsa good... Beer was very cold.

This place is run down and dirty! Floors, window seals and tables are gross.. Bathroom horrible.. Our soda cups are so old and scratched up. Horrible atmosphere. Food was good and service was ok. Even though food was good I would hate to see the kitchen! read more

We were down here in Salinas for a softball tournament and visited this restaurant because of it's close proximity to our motel. Do not eat here. The service was great, the food was absolutely horrible. I ordered the steak fajitas and my wife the mixed fajitas. The portions for both were huge. One platter was easily enough for two people, but the food was flavorless. Typically you choose Mexican cuisine expecting it to be savory, but that was not the case here. The beef was cut in big flat strips, accompanied with cut up bell pepper, onion, tomatoes and zucchini squash. Not even a hint of salt, let alone any other spices on any of it. Just bland grilled vegetables and beef, with NO seasoning. I took a bite of the chicken and shrimp that came with my wife's dish, and they were just as bland and the chicken was dry. The plate of rice and beans that accompanied the platter was pretty generic. They don't have an alcohol license, so no tequila margaritas here. Do yourself a favor and take a pass on this place. read more

every time can't get enough of this place Everything on the menu is so delicious chavelas are so good also! Servers are nice and very fast. Eating there or even when I call for take out everything is always correct thank you guys!! read more

Pretty good, they actually made me a chicken quesadilla and I don't think it's on the menu. Chips n salsa was yumny and they had a band it looked like fun, good atmosphere. read more

Just passing thru Salinas today and spotted this place just down the street from our hotel. Got my standard chicken enchiladas and chile relleno and wasn't disappointed. Authentic and delicious. Service was speedy and friendly. The restaurant was filled with locals. Lost a star because my margarita was just so so. read more

Horrible service, the agua de horchata is so watered down, the chips have no salt whatsoever and the waitress was waiting while serving us, they're also super rude and don't even bother pretending. read more

Came here with my family and I am sad to say I was not impressed at all. The service was good but the food had no taste at all.

No Bueno!!! We were so excited when we saw the full parking lot as we had been craving good Mexican food for awhile. We were very dissapointed. The food was mediocre at best and that combined with the SUPER loud Mariachi made for a not so great time. However, the wait staff were awesome. read more

Had mixta tostada it easily became three tostadas. Service was fast and friendly. It's a great place for lunch or dinner.

Got off the 101 and thought to try dinner here on wednesday, oct 9. The food is good, and the waitress was really nice. The place could use a little fixing up, the main problem was the bathrooms are really run down and there was no soap in either the men's or women's bathroom, kind of freaked me out. read more

Simply the best authentic Mexican food restaurant in Northern California. The portions are generous and the prices are reasonable. The service is impeccable. I come to salinas for business and never pass this gem up. read more

Glad everyone else had a good meal, I'm not even sure how that's possible. We were in town and saw the place looked crowded so we thought we would try it out. My boyfriend could live on Mexican food and we eat it nearly on a daily basis! First off they sat us in a booth that was built incorrectly and he couldn't fit between the seat and the table, when he asked our waitress to move us she did and said "well at least you fit in it, most people can't" ...I was thinking why did u seat us if you knew that??? Kind of funny! We also asked the waitress several questions about the food that she wasn't sure of ie; does the menudo have hominy? She said I have to ask what hominy is. Then she brought my boyfriend linear and one of the had already been squeezed.. GROSS!!! Anyways, the meal was bland, my bf sent the carnitas back because they were so dry.. it was a waste of time.. food was bad. I wouldn't recommend it and I wouldn't go back ! read more

Lovely service! Wonderful food. Great find via Yelp while on the road!

Solid mex... Their Micheladas have shrimp on the rim. Weird coming from Texas! I'd go back.

Hands down my favorite Mexican restaurant in town. I always have the enchilada plate & it is delicious. They're plates are authentic & yummy. The service is great. They also have mariachi playing which is a plus. It does get busy but it is worth the wait. read more

Always a wait. BUT totally worth it. Delicious food. By far the best mexican restaurant in salinas!

My family have been regulars at this place for over 10 years,I myself don't like the place always super pack, loud and the food is mediocre but to my better judgement i agree to go there for dinner. Since it was a lot of us i called to ask if we needed a reservation and was told that we didn't. We arrived and all the big tables were occupy so a waitress asked us if we would be okay sitting outside in the patio area we told her to gives us a few minutes so we could consult with the rest of the party, after we did so another waitress approached us and told us that patio was available and we could sit there, so we did. After we were sitting the manager came by and demanded (very rudely) to know who told us we could sit there and why we were sitting there and that we needed to get up because he had a party coming in that had reserved the patio and when we asked him if could wait there until they got there or he was able to sit us somewhere else but he refused to; saying they were coming soon and that he couldn't sit us anywhere basically telling us to get up and leave. Needless to say we are not going back there ever. read more