EL MALO

Stopped in since it was Cinco de Mayo. Great margherita and mezcal and soda. Food was excellent, beef enchilada was tender and the carnitas burrito was also delicious. Staff were super nice and helpful and really made the night even better. A must try if your in the mood for Mexican food.

Made the trek here.

Not too difficult to find given other reviews.

Waiting to order food again since they are out of many things.

So far impression is not favorable.

Updates: it took 20-30 minutes just to get our orders in.

About 1 hour to get our food after telling us what we wanted was actually out.

Not child friendly as they have no child seats.

The child meal isn’t actually Mexican food or close to it. It is meatballs, bok choy and mushrooms, and ketchup rice (like from Omurice).

The quesadilla was not bad or good just bland. My wife ended up not finishing it. They did ask if we wanted it cut in 3 or four pieces….not sure if this accounted for the 40 ish minutes we spent waiting for it….there was nothing special about it and tortilla didn’t taste like it was made in house.

I got the taco five set. 3 carnitas and 2 carne asada. The 3 carnitas were good and the salsa verde they provided were good (2 of the 5 provided). The carne asada were horrible. Super tough and dry I actually chocked a bit.

The sauces were half portions but there were 5 of them. The green and red salsa verde were good but one I forget what it was probably good to most but just wasn’t what I was looking for so no fault there, the mayo was confusing as who eats tacos with mayo like that…didn’t even bother with it, the pico de gallo was old…definitely could tell it wasn’t fresh.

Order frozen banana mocktail for myself and kid. I thought it wasn’t good but kid enjoyed.

Service: person was nice but definitely in the wrong setting. If this was like a Japanese restaurant then it’d be no problem to only see them a few times in multiple hours. Tried to get their attention multiple times with only half of them successful. Managed to get two refills of water in about 2 hours.

It wasn’t busy only about 12 people so maybe like 20% of the place being utilized. Felt bad for the couple and child behind us because again no child seats so they were trying to balance a toddler on a seat and ended up waiting too long and cancelling order. We had a stroller luckily so left our toddler in it for safety.

Total was about 6700¥(円)

500 yen surcharge (wasn’t expecting this especially considering horrible service)

900 yen frozen banana mocktail

1000 yen kids plate

500 yen green tea (this was a surprise as well given how small the cups were)

1800 yen 5 taco set

1100 yen ish (I forgot this exact price) quesadillas (absolutely not worth it)

660 yen nachos….these are not nachos they are just chips comes with 2 of 3 dips.

Guacamole what no taste
Salsa (said tomato so thought it be ok for kid but they meant salsa…they were not happy)
Some bean dip but they were out so not like we could choose it if we wanted to.

The fresh chips were actually pretty good but not worth the money given how small and how few you got.

Overall it was disappointing.

If they were going to take so long they should have told us it was going to take upwards of an hour for food.

I wanted to try the enchiladas but they said they were offering them at the time.

We got there around 7-7:30 so it wasn’t particularly late to which we thought we would have to worry about them running out of things considering not many customers but we were wrong.

I would have like to try the enchiladas but I or my family will not be back. Just isn’t worth the headache given so many other options.

Advice:
1. tell customers upfront about things that are out.

2. Tell customers time to get food if exceedingly long.

3. Have the server be more attentive (if you aren’t going to offer a way for people to get water themselves then make sure your server periodically at least checks on customers)

El Malo is true to its name: bad. The atmosphere is cool and the neon sign is awesome, but the food sucks. We ordered the enchiladas, chicken soup, and fajitas. The caldo had good flavor, and that was the only decent dish, but the added mushrooms. The enchiladas used like a fake American cheese, definitely not a Mexican queso, and was just a plate a mush. The fajitas were the most disgusting- who leaves the skin on chicken fajitas? Also, boiled, not grilled, which defeats the whole plate. We felt sick leaving the restaurant. They look like they had a good drink menu, and that is the ONLY things I'd say go for. Do not go for the food. The "good" reviews don't add up...

Service was great staff greeted us at the door and took us to our table.
There is a service charge of 300yen per person and prices are listed not including tax so expect that all on the final bill.
Food size was minimal as per photo and not warm but luke warm. For this size I could easily eat 10+.
Atmosphere is great place is nicely decorated.

This restaurant is at first of all difficult to find it because he’s on the sixth floor in the middle of Kokusai street in Naha.
The interior are pretty nice. I mean they look very Mexican but they are a little bit too dark for me. You can’t understand what you’re eating at the end of the day, then to tip at all you get a raw tacos and pretty much flavor less food and drinks . The only good thing was the enchiladas.
It’s really difficult to find a good Mexican restaurant here in Okinawa, even though there are so many I think only a couple of them really make the difference using chili from Mexico and spices, but this is not the case .
It’s no wonder that on Friday night it was pretty much empty. It’s a shame because the location is good and Mexican food here in Okinawa is really popular. I think they should read up the food by far. .