The claim on Mexican food is tentative at best -- they simply "Austrianize" a bit too much. HOwever, a few dishes are quite good and, until my last visit, they've traditionally had the best, freshest guacamole in the city. It's just a pity that they sometimes succumb to the Vienna plague of stale tortilla chips.

The back garden is a treasure in the 4th, and the service/owners are always very friendly.

Happy hour cocktails are a bargain and the margaritas are the second or third best in the city.

As far as "standard" Mexican restaurants, this place is the best. The only better ones are more casual: Tacos Lopez and Fresco Grill.

I ate here with a large party consisting of two families. We had excellent, friendly service and an amazing amount of excellent food.

We started with the totopos, crispy tortilla chips with three different delicious accompaniments.

The kids had a delicious chicken soup and quesadillas.

The adults sampled the chilaquiles (fried tortillas chips with green salsa and a perfectly-cooked flank steak), a lovely special shrimp dish with a sauce made from freshly-roasted chiles, an assortment of tacos including a delicious spicy sausage, and other delights.

The margaritas are perfection and reasonably priced considering the punch they pack, and the buckets of iced Mexican beer are MOST welcome. Los Mexikas also cranks out chelada and mechelada, which are beer with lime and chilies and totally delicious.

If you're familiar with the Mexican food scene here in Vienna, there are a handful of relatively fun and adequate spots, but only two serious contenders for delicious and authentic. Tacos Lopez and Los Mexicas. Of the two, Los Mexicas wins for a more varied and delicious menu and a more soulful, passionate approach to create good food.

Unfortunately, this place didn't live up to them at all.

First, the positive: it's a nice room, decent location, nice, laid-back decor and the Sol beer with lime I had was delicious. I imagine it might serve some decent cocktails and for the poor souls who have to rely on coming here, I guess it's a decent option.

Now, the negative: the food was really pretty terrible. We made the mistake of showing up on Sunday for the brunch. Of course, we tried to call to see if they were open or serving the full menu, but their phone goes straight to voice mail. Since the buffet looked horrible, we opted for menu items: some tacos, some enchiladas and some black bean chili. The taquitos (they did not produce what I would call a taco) came out "okay", but the rest was bland, boring, poor quality and just crappy.

Finally, the service was bad -- even by Vienna standards. I've lived here long enough not to expect much, but open disdain, surly, gruff treatment and flat out acting like I'm a nuisance for showing up to eat at your restaurant are just too much for me to endure. Yes, that was *NO* tip that I left you, asshole.

Just to explain. First, we showed up and the guy didn't even acknowledge our "hellos". OK, whatevs. I don't care. I asked if they had a non-smoking area, and he sort of said, "ya, outside" and walked away. It was 30 degrees in the sun with no umbrellas out there, so I chased him down and said, "no, inside." He pointed us to an area "ganz hinten" which was fine, but stuffy.

He asked if we were taking the buffet and I said, "we'll look at it, but do you have a menu?" "Only a few little dishes." Fine. Just bring it. That's okay.

So he comes to take our order, and, having noted it said "other food is available, just ask!", and, also having noted the chips and salsa already being served on the buffet, I asked if it was possible to get some chips & salsa. "No! I already told you - only what is written here." "Yes, but I just thought I'd ask, since it says "other food is available, just ask!" and -- "Bitte? he cut me off. Screw this guy and screw this place. Never again. Everything he said was with a sneer and with the half-open, disinterested gaze of a stereotypically mean-spirited and out-of-his-element Viennese waiter.

Also, they won't serve cocktails 'til after 6 and the 3 tortilla chips that came with our chili were stale. They don't make their own tortillas and basically this is seriously lousy and you'd be much better off just skipping it. Maybe they have a nice schnitzel.

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.

It delivers, in my opinion, the best Mexican dining experience in Vienna.

The food is mostly authentic and any quibbles I have with the menu items are a matter of preference. For example, I prefer my guacamole to be very simple: lime, avacado and salt. Tacos Lopez adds onion. I can deal with that, because at least, unlike every other Mexican place besides Jalisco, they use real avacados instead of powder mixed into sour cream.

In short, this place is excellent. The service is friendly and the menu is diverse enough to feed any posse.

Menu items to try include the plato (some of everything), the mole tacos, the tampiquena, the gorditas with nopales (cactus), the guacamole and the wonderful beer-mixed-with-chilis and lime: mechelada!