I am a freak for Mexican food and, especially, I love burrito and tacos done like they do them in the Americas (including Mexico). In the States, it's not very hard to find a really good burrito, with almost any city of any considerable size having a "pick-and-wrap" serving line where fresh ingredients are combined to order and you are sent on your way with a tasty, flavorful bomb of happiness.

Well, Vienna only has one place that even closely approximates that experience, which is Fresco Grill. Taco Grill? I'm not even sure where to begin.

First, I guess that they really are trying to mimic Taco Bell, which is an international, American-based fast food restaurant. It's not terribly good, but it's not horrific, either. It's cheap and popular among those on a budget. God knows that I ate a lot of it in my student days until I discovered a local Taqueria that was matching Taco Bell's prices for homemade, hand-wrapped burritos on homemade flour tortillas straight of the griddle and lovingly stretched by a hairy-armed man smoking a cigarette. Perfection, really.

Anyway, assuming Taco Grill is attempting to mimick Taco Bell, the restaurant doesn't succeed and is actually of much lower quality. The meats were dry, the tortillas were stale. I'm not sure what they claimed to be salsa was, but it sure as heck wasn't salsa. The choice of spices in the various fillings were not inedible, but they definitely did not taste like anything I've had in the Americas, Mexico or anywhere else for that matter. The quesadilla was basically cold, the menu was weird (fried cheese???) and, overall, I cannot recommend this place but for two redeeming factors:

1) The room and location are really cool. I love things in the Stadtbahnbögen (under the former U6 tracks). They obviously put a lot of money into this place, which brings into question the business judgement of the owners. Just, exactly, how many tacos does one have to sell to pay the rent?

2) They have self-serve sodas and, unlike most locations in Vienna, their Coke does not taste weird or off-flavor, but is rather almost the same as an American Coke. Now, I don't go around drinking a lot of Coke because it's not good for you and my kids would want it all the time if I did, but when I *do* want one on occasion, I'd like it not to taste like stale, sweet monkey ass like most of the Coke does in Vienna. This place actually had a good Coke.

I wish this place would have been good. I don't know what they can do to revamp. The vision is so flawed with the menu and the execution is so poor that I just don't see the owner taking a trip to, say, San Francisco or Los Angeles and seeing the light, retooling and providing a top notch fast food burrito and taco experience.