Guelaguetza

We ate dinner on a Sunday night, which they had a live band playing music. If that's not your vibe, definitely suggest eating on the covered patio. The service was great and the food was excellent. Will have to come back to try other things on the dinner menu.

Guelaguetza opened in 1994 by immigrant husband and wife Fernando Lopez and Maria Monterrubio. They serve Oaxacan food. They also have a small store and they have an online store as well. Parking is in their lot for a fee. We found a place on the street, just mind the signs. The place is huge with lots of seating and on some nights they have music. I would sit far from the stage because the music is loud. It is nice though. The seating is not at all comfortable. I don't like spending a ton of money to sit in what looks like outdoor chairs. They do have an outside area which looks very nice. The service is quite good. They are able to help with the menu and your food comes out pretty fast. They are over priced for what you get and as to what we had it was not great. It was average to bad. We had guacamole which was an absurd price for the small plate and it had salad in it. It was not great, but it was fine. We also order chicken enchiladas and it was served with so much mole sauce that you had to be careful or you would be wearing it. The mole sauce is quite good. Now, you might not believe this, but they forgot to put anything at all in the not hand made flour tortillas. They were wrapped and looked so pretty, but did not have one thing in them. It is good I looked and tried to cut them for my delayed grandson or he would have eaten them because he does not like any stress at all. I mean they were empty. I send them back, no apology. They came back and had the chicken and cheese, but they forgot to put cheese in the tortillas. There was just a tiny amount as a garnish on top. I paid extra for the cheese. My grandson wanted no more stress so he began to eat them as they were until I asked him if he even liked them. He hated them. We took him somewhere else after dinner. And we paid a lot of money for food that was not eaten. My husband tried it and said it was bad. So that was that. My husband had carnitas, but they forgot the rice, which again we paid extra for. He said the meat was good, not great. I had the Quesadillas Fritas which were fine. We will never be back. We spent close to 150$ and had to go elsewhere to eat.

I remembered hearing about a Mole place near Korea town and we were driving through around lunch time, so we looked it up. Boy am I glad we did. Plenty of parking once you navigate the streets. Nice open patio outside to enjoy the weather, huge welcoming interior too. Staff was pleasant and quick to great us, they guided us to a place on the patio since we had our dog. They brought out chips with mole sauce and some waters for us. What a nice difference to chips and salsa, the mole was delicious. Since we love mole negro at our local places when we can find it we ordered that and mole verde to try. We were both excited to see the Chapulines on the menu, so we got those to start. Unlike other times I've had grasshoppers, these were not super dry which was great. They tasted so good in the marinade or sauce and paired really well with the avocado. We hard a hard time putting them down, wish we had ordered another for take out. The main dishes came out shortly after and we huge. We realized quickly that each dish was really a sharing size for what we normally eat. The mole negro with the chicken leg quarter was nice and rich, warm flavors, hints of chocolate, the meat was super tender. The mole verde was a nice change for us, a lot brighter and a pleasant flavor that I can't really describe. The tortillas were really fresh and warm, everything felt like it was made fresh. Between the welcoming service and restaurant and the great food, I will look forward to this again next time we are passing through the area.

This restaurant certainly has excellent Molé sauce. Prices are unjustifiably high. The chicken mole is sort of reasonable at $25 but five dollars for a tortilla? Horchata is seven dollars.. it is very expensive for what you get. Stay away from the dessert flan which is below average. It is a nice large room to dine in and it is a very authentic restaurant if you can handle the prices which are simply too high..