Santa Fe Taqueria

Solid three star Mexican joint. Tried the carnitas and carne asada, prefer the carnitas. The boy tried the taco Grande with the Brazilian beef. Tasty meat but a mess to eat. And now we’re rhyming. Boom.

I’ve been coming here for about a year. Their shredded beef is so juicy and delicious! My favorite Mexican joint in Portland hands down.

Open atmosphere, assembly line style ordering. Great so you can see the food your getting. Had the nachos this time and they were delicious! The lemonade is superb.

Had happy hour here today @ 3 pm. 2 margaritas, coconut shrimp, chips and salsa and some shredded beef nachos. The margaritas were basic. On the second one, I had to ask for extra salt on the rims of the glass. Skip it. The salsa was just alright, mushy tomatoes in there, zero to mild spicy, the shredded beef was the best one from the selection.
The server was super sweet and very attentive.
The bartender that I asked if I just sit outside or go inside first to ask for a table outside was nice.
The pain started @ 6 pm. It is now 8:30 pm and this is my third trip to the bathroom. Painful, smelly visit here. I don’t know if it’s the food from this place, I just know that this was not what I had in mind to do for the rest of the evening.
One star for the friendly people.
One star for the cleanliness of the place.
And one star for the price on happy hour.

Ugh the food here was freakin amazing! I’m form Cali and we all know the Cali Mexican food is top notch so I have high standards for my Mexican food (and I’m a Hispanic native) this reminded me of home mind you I have been to like 14 different taquerias and non of them satisfy me, I drove all the from from Hillsboro. Also ask for baby (I believe that was her name) she has great customer service! The deserves a raise or something because she had a smile all the time and catered to my and my friends! I will be back one for the food two for the customer service and three because it’s in a very beautiful area!!!

Worst place ever !!! People still
Your drinks and only class come here! Will never recommend this place!

I gotta agree with a previous review about the pouty staff here. The waitress seemed annoyed that we didn’t know what we wanted to order as soon as she asked if we were ready to order, she even rolled her eyes. I asked for a michelada and I know not every place makes their micheladas the same, but wow this place made the worst one I have ever had. I love spicy food but this thing was like a glass with 70% clamato 20% hot sauce and chile powder and 10% beer and lime, really disgusting. After looking at pictures of the food on Unilocal we decided not to order any food. No thanks! Never again.

This is one of those places that you’d think should and would be better especially because of the location. The upscale Nob Hill area of town. It bustles with locals and tourists going in and out of shops and restaurants constantly.
Santa Fe sits across the street from the always busy Salt & Straw. We wandered around the neighborhood until we decided on this places. The selections were pretty good, tacos, burritos, quesadillas and ceviche. There was also quite a few choices for meat. I went with asada on a burrito and my friend went with a Verde chicken for a quesadilla.
Chips and salsa were good (although my friend ordered them on the line we had to ask for them again once we were sitting)
Beers were good. My friend had an IPA and I had Old Town Kolsch.
My carne asada burrito was bland. No taste what so ever. I was a bit bummed and expected more. It’s as if they didn’t even marinade the meat and left off salt and pepper to boot. It tasted like nothing. Everything else in the burrito was there to mask that fact.
So yeah, I’m not one to enjoy giving low reviews but this is what it is. I’ve had better seasoning on the meat choices at Chipotle. Maybe it was a fluke, maybe not but I don’t get up to this area often and when I do in the future, Santa Fe isn’t that high on the list right now.
On to the next place.

These Mexicans need to know how to cook real Mexican food. The Mole Chicken doesn’t even taste like Mole and the carnitas tasted flat. We are so disappointed. We don’t recommend this place.
Santa Fe, don’t turn the dishes into something Americanized. Be authentic and you’ll be loved.

This is a Subway/​Chipotle-​style mexican restaurant where you slide yourself down a long heater dish buffet filled with various goodness. I’ve only had burritos here, they offer three trim levels that I can’t remember the names of, but I’ll call them DX, LX and EX. Each level is a dollar or two more than the previous, and includes extras like pico, guac, sour cream. Regardless of level, you have your pick of meats, and they offer a significant variety, from basic ground beef to carnitas and asada. I think they always provide a handful of chips with a little cup of salsa. They also have a punchcard, after 10 meals $ 10 or more, the punchcard basically turns into a $ 10 gift card. They do have another section with a full bar in it that I was in once years ago (and is really too small of a space — really, really).

We sat at the bar. Food was fine… Nothing special… I just don’t understand the pouty attitude of the bar staff! We had to beg for their attention, it was like they were doing us a favor.
I miss the old bartender.

Great service, fun staff, great happy hour, super good margaritas, my favorite late night neighborhood Mexican food.
I grew up with Santa Fe & they will always be in my heart & I will always go there!

I have been eating here for almost the entire 25 years they have been in business. When I first started going, I thought I just liked salty flavored meats (and margaritas) but then I accidentally ordered the mole chicken and I have been hooked on sweet chicken ever since.
That made sense, since I have a sweet tooth. They have numerous flavors of margarita’s and they are discounted during happy hour. My favorite is the Prickly Pear. They also have strawberry, pomegranate, guava, peach, mango or coconut.
They have a great happy hour menu but if you miss it, $ 9.95 for a burrito, beans and rice is a really good price for a full meal.
Their salsa is the best I have found so I end up with more than one bowl full and probably slurp more salsa than I eat chips.
All that said, this no frills restaurant is a fantastic place to go in the summer for drinks outside, to people watch. I can’t count how many hours I have spent drinking margarita’s out front in the sunshine as the (fancy) motorcycle crew pulls up (every Saturday and Sunday it would seem) and hang out on the street in front.
Luckily, Santa Fe is far enough down alphabet row that parking isn’t as difficult as if you were going to hang near Burnside. It is totally worth the trip to NW Portland!

Severely disappointing. I should’ve known. Sorry I didn’t trust you, Unilocalers.
I ordered a veggie taco, a side of rice, and chips & guac from Postmates to be delivered. The total for this order was $ 12.45. When the food arrived, my «taco» was literally a tortilla with refried beans inside, folded over with pico de gallo on top. Wait, what? Taco? Okay… Because I delivered with Postmates, there wasn’t much I could do about sending the food back.
The food wasn’t terrible and I haven’t yet died, so I’ll give it two stars instead of one. I am curious to know, though, what about this food is Mexican and why is it so damn expensive?

I really enjoyed our lunch here! It looks super cool from the outside, and like a cantina on the inside. We grabbed a table and went up to the counter to order. They have containers of all their meat options behind a glass screen, which was super helpful in choosing what I wanted. I got their breakfast burrito and Bestie ordered a fish taco, then we grabbed cutlery and water from the water station and headed back to our table. I wasn’t sure if I needed to go back up to get our food, but moments later it arrived.
My burrito was drizzled in sour cream and sprinkled with fresh salsa, with a side of freshly made tortilla chips. The burrito wasn’t ENORMOUS, which I was super glad about because typically I really want to finish one but physically can’t! This one was still a lot of food, but I made it! I cut into it and found a delicious, ooey-​gooey mix of meat, cheese, and egg — super satisfying!
If you come here expecting perfectly authentic Mexican food like you’d find in Mexico you’ll be disappointed… mostly because you’re in the PNW, not Mexico! But for an American-​Mexican place it’s super good! I would totally come back here.

Best spot ever. I moved away from Portland 12 years ago and was craving this place so badly. My buritto and margarita were just as I remembered — perfect. Super low key + a great restaurant makes this always one to come back to.

This is my first experience with Mexican food since leaving Southern California — where there are TONS of amazing Mexican food places.
I was disappointed. I mean, I don’t enjoy giving not-​so-​good reviews, and I gave this place a try even with the so-​so reviews, because I was hoping to be one of the people that would give it a high rating. Nope.
It’s kind of like Chipotle with the assembly line, but this place has so much more, and I can’t say that it’s for the better.
I watched them put my food in a microwave. They took it out, put cheese on it, and put it back in the microwave. Yeah… and the guy at the register touches your money, right? Well, he also uses those hands to grab chips for your meal… without gloves. Can you at least use tongs? Or make pre-​packaged bags?
I’ll give them credit that they had a decent salsa. That’s it.

Been coming by here for years and stopped in tonight for a drink.
Atmosphere is always friendly and the people watching outside is great — even the crazies across the street apparently waiting an hour+ for a gelato at 11pm!
Tonight they were having a beginning Salsa session going on and people involved in it looked like they were having a lot of fun.

I wouldn’t recommend this place to anyone. I’m not from Portland or the west coast area, but I’m pretty positive that there has to be better Mexican food. I came here with my husband, my mom and her bf during a visit to Portland for The Nike Opening.
This place is also expensive for lunch food and is not that good. Between the four is us we got Chicken Tacos with Rice & Beans, Quesadillas, 2 Burritos with rice and beans and 2 chips and salsa. I think all this came to be something in the ball park of $ 50. I could go out to eat at a GREAT place on the east coast have 6 ppl more food than this and it’s only $ 75. I know the west coast has expensive living cost but this was not good food and ridiculous. I don’t mind paying for something when it’s good but when it’s not I have a problem. They didn’t have regular taco seasoned chicken. They had four different chicken flavors and the two that I choice were not good. One was mole (suppose to be a sweeter balanced flavor) and other was chile something (red sauce based). I don’t mind being open minded and trying new things but when I’ve had them at other places and they were dang good and I come to a place were they suck… its a issue. The mole was entirely to sweet but I ate most of it. The chile (red sauce based one) tasted like chicken with sauce straight out the can dumped over it, no seasoning. I did not eat this one. All the food was meh *shrugs* blah! We ate enough to not be hungry then trashed the rest. If ever in Portland i definitely would not comeback here.

Eh, I paid $ 10 for a «Brazilian beef burrito» and was not pleased at all.
Santa Fe does the Chipotle style, work down the line process of making your food.
However the problem for me was, I paid a higher price for a burrito that was just packed full of beans. I found maybe about 5 or 6 piece of beef in my burrito, 1 of which was a huge chunk of cartilage that was extremely chewy. Why they served it to me, I don’t know. I gave it to my dog.
On the plus side, they have a lot of options to choose from here. Chicken, beef, pork, and a lot of sea food options as well. After my first really bad experiece though, I don’t feel their food is worth the price. I won’t be back.